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Lord Byron j^ige par les temoins dc sa Vie. 



MY RECOLLECTIONS 



OF 



LORD BYRON; 



THOSE OF EYE-WITNESSES OF HIS LIFE. 



" The long promised work of the 
Countess Guiccioi.i." — 

A t/icno'uin. 






/ JV£IF YORK 



HARPER & BROTHERS, PUBLISHERS, 

FRANKLIN SQUARE. 
1869. 



ADVERTISEMENT BY THE ENGLISH PUBLISHER. 

The Publisher of this Translation feels authorized to state, that it is 
the production of the celebrated Coltntess Guiccioli. 

RICHARD BENTLEY. 



TO 

THE AUTHOR OF THIS WORK, 

THE 

ENGLISH TRANSLATION 

IS 

3S.espect{uIIi' DetifratctJ 

BY 

PUBERT E. n. JERNINGHAM. 



CONTENTS 



Introductort Sketch of Lord Byron Page 9 

OHAPTER I. 
Lord Byron and M. de Lamartine 43 

CHAPTER IL 
Portrait op Lord Byron 58 

CHAPTER III. 
French Portrait of Lord Byron 70 

CHAPTER IV. 
His Religious Opinions 106 

CHAPTER V. 
His Childhood and his Youth 174 

CHAPTER VI. 
Ills Friendships 201 

CHAPTER Vir. 
Lord Byron considered as a Father, as a Brother, and as a 
Son — His Goodness shown by the Strength of his instinct- 
ive Affections 232 

CHAPTER Vin. 
Qualities of Lord Byron's Heart 245 

CHAPTER IX. 
Ills Benevolence and Kinlness 284 

CHAPTER X. 
Lord Byron's Qualities and Virtues of Soul 305 

CHAPTER XI. 
Lord Byron's Constancy 347 

CHAPTER XII. 
His Courage and Fortitude 361 



viii Contents. 



CHAPTER XIII. 
His Modesty Page 372 

CHAPTER XIV. 

Virtues of his Soul 381 

CHAPTER XV. 
His Generosity elevated into Heroism 39G 

CHAPTER XVI. 
His Faults 414 

CHAPTER XVII. 
His Irritability 427 

CHAPTER XVIII. 
His Mobility 450 

CHAPTER XIX. 
His Misanthropy and Sociability 457 

CHAPTER XX. 
His Pride 484 

CHAPTER XXI. 

^is Vanity 488 

CHAPTER XXII. 
Lord Byron's Marriage and its Consequences 504 

CHAPTER XXHI. 
His Gayety and Melancholy 545 

CHAPTER XXIV. 
His Melancholy 563 

CHAPTER XXV. 

Attraction of Truth for ; or, Conscience the chief Quality of 
HIS Soul 631 

Semi-Biography of Byron in Mr. Disraeli's " Venktia".... 056 



Lord Byron juge par les Temoins de sa Vic. 



MY RECOLLECTIONS, ETC. 



INTRODUCTION. 



"To know another man well, especially if he be a noted and illustrious char- 
acter, is a great thing not to be despised."— Sainte-Beuve. 

Many years ago a celebrated writer, in speaking of Lord 
Byron, who had then been dead some years, said tliat so much 
liad ah-eady been written upon him that the subject had al- 
most become commonplace, but was far from being exhausted. 
This truth, indisputable when applied to Byron's genius, his 
works, and to his intellect, was then and still is equally posi- 
tive when referring to his moral qualities. A subject as well 
as an object may become commonplace by the quantity, but 
nevertheless remain new and rare, owing to its quality. A 
subject can not be exhausted before it has been seen under 
every one of its various aspects, and appreciated in all its 
points. If much has been said of Lord Byron, has his truly 
noble character been fairly brought to light ? Has he not, 
on the contrary, been judged rather as the author than the 
man, and have not the imaginary creations of his powerful 
mind been too much identified with reality ? In the best bi- 
ographies of his life do we not meet with many gaps which 
have to be filled up — nay, worse, gaps filled up with errors 
which have to be eradicated to make room for the truth ? The 
object of this work is precisely to do away with these errors 
and to replace them by facts, and to dispel the shadows which 
fancy has raised around his name. For the old opinions we 
wish to substitute new appreciations, by weighing exactly the 
measure of truth which exists in the former; and by the logic 
of facts we wish to judge fairly so as to prevent posterity 
from being deceived. In doing this we do not pretend to 

A 2 



10 iNTkODUCTOKY SKETCU 

give England finy new information. For a long time, no 
doubt, error sprang from that country ; but years and events 
Lave passed since that state of things existed. The liberal 
and tolerant spirit, enlightened by philosophy, which has 
spread all over liberal England, has also been reflected in the 
opinions formed of men, and has modified many pages of bi- 
ography and history and made Englishmen feel how numer- 
ous were the wrongs of which they were guilty toward their 
illustrious countryman. 

It is useless to speak of the national selfishness of England, 
and pretend that she only appreciates or rewards Avith her 
love and esteem such writers as flatter her pride or hide her 
defects from the eyes of foreigners. This may be true, gen- 
erally speaking ; but Lord Byron's patriotic feelings were of 
a very different cast. He thought it best to expose to the 
world at large the faults of his countrymen, in order to cor- 
rect them. His patriotism was influenced by the superiority 
of the noble sentiments which actuated his life. Feeling as 
he did, that he was, above all, a member of the great human 
community, and declaring it openly ; despising popularity, if 
it cost him the sacrifice of a truth which he deemed it useful 
and right to proclaim, and thus going against many of the 
passions, prejudices, and opinions of his countrymen, Byron 
certainly Avounded many susceptibilities; and could Ave for- 
get all he had to suffer at the hands of the English, we might 
almost say he was too severe in his judgments upon them. 
NotAvithstanding, hoAveA'er, it is almost impossible to travel 
in England Avithout meeting everyAvh^re some token of hom- 
age paid to the memory of Byron. Scotland, who looks upon 
him almost as a son, is proud to show the several houses 
Avherein he lived when a child, and preserves his name and 
memory Avith love and respect. To have seen him once, is a 
recollection of Avhich one is proud. A particular charm en- 
circles the places, mountains, rivers, and bridge of Don, of 
Avhich he speaks, simply because he has mentioned them in his 
poems. A letter or any thing Avhich has belonged to him is 
looked upon as a treasure. 

At Harrow, the beloved residence of his youth, the grow- 
ing generation boAv Avith affectionate respect before the pyra- 
mid which has been erected to his memory by the love of a 



Of Lord Byron. 11 

former youthful generation. At Cambridge, among all tlie 
monuments which recall the glories of the past, Lord Byron's 
statue commands the rest, and occupies the place of honor. 
The rooms which he had there are shown and reverenced as 
places which have harbored genius. In Parliament the same 
man who formerly, by unjust and unmerited criticisms of the 
youthful poet, decried his growing genius, and who was guilty 
of other wrongs against him, has made an act of reparation 
and of justice by expressing publicly his regret that a grudge 
of the dean in Byron's time had prevailed to prevent a monu- 
ment being erected in Westminster Abbey to the memory of 
the poet. The pilgrimage to Newstead is looked upon as an 
intellectual feast, if not as a duty, by young Englishmen, and 
his genius is so much revered by them that they do not admit 
that he is equalled by any contemporary jjoet or likely to be 
surpassed by those who follow. No doubt, therefore, England 
now-a-days only prefers Avhat formerly she used to exact from 
her poets. Moore's culpable timidities and Macaulay's declam- 
atory exaggerations must, at least, be looked upon as weak- 
nesses of character, Avhich would have been disowned by 
themselves, had they lived long enough to witness the change 
in public opinion. 

Although full justice has not yet been done to the noble 
character of the man, still partial justice has been rendered to 
Byron's memory by the summary dismissal of the numerous 
false writings which appeared and Avhich tended to replace 
the truth by the creations of fancy, and to put into the mouth 
of the poet the thoughts of tlieir authors and not his own, or 
to insult him by a magnanimous defense, the honor and glory 
of which was to redound entirely to the writers. It is neces- 
sary to observe, that if Byron was openly calumniated during 
liis lifetime, he was not less so after his death by disguised 
slander, especially by that kind of absolution which in reality 
is one of the most odious forms of calumny, since it is the 
most hypocritical and most difficult to deal with, and least 
likely to be touched. But England has at last understood 
the truth and settled all such opinions. 

To England, therefore, thesa pages, which contain the rec- 
tification of certain old opinions, will be useless. But can the 
same be said of other countries, and of P"'rance especially? 



12 Introductory Sketch 

Even now-a-days, we read such fanciful appreciation of Byron's 
character that we could almost believe that the rumors and 
calumnies which came from England had never been refuted ; 
and that extraordinary views expressed by Lamartine in beau- 
tiful verse are still entertained, and the question still asked, 
whether Byron was " a devil or an angel ?" On reading such 
appreciations, it seems opportune to present those who admire 
genius and truth with a very humble but conscientious study 
of Byron's great mind. 

Can it be objected, that the fact of the defense of a foreign- 
er detracts from the interest of the reader ? Can a genius be 
a stranger to man, and does not the eai'th seem too small to 
contain such exceptional beings ? 

Our civilization, which has almost suppressed every physi- 
cal barrier that exists between the nations of the earth, has 
still further annihilated those of the intellect : so much so, 
that Shakspeare, Dante, Goethe, are as much revered in France 
as in their respective countries, notwithstanding the difference 
of the idioms in which they have Avritten. The same will 
occur in respect to Lord Byron, whose name alone opposes 
every barrier, and against whom the difference of nationality 
can not form any obstacle. The language of genius is not of 
one country only, but appertains to humanity in general : and 
God Himself has implanted its rules in every heart. 

This book is not a regular nor a methodical biography. 
Nor is it an apology ; but rather a study, an analysis, the 
portrait of a great mind seen under all its aspects, with no 
other decided intention on the part of the writer than to tell 
the truth, and to rest upon indisputable facts and rely upon 
unimpeachable testimony. 

The public now, it is said, can not bear eulogy, and cares 
only to know the weak points of great men. We do not be- 
lieve this to be the case. It would be too severe a criticism 
of human nature in general, and of our times in particular. 
In any case, we can not accept the statement as correct, when 
applied to noble characters to whom we especially dedicate 
this work. It may be, the reader will find in our essay beau- 
ties which he had not yet observed, which have hitherto been 
disputed in the original, and which less sympathetic natures 
thai) ours might term complacent eulogies; but the fear of 



Of Lord Byron= 13 

beino- blamed and of being unj^opular shall not deter us from 
our intention of bringing them forth. No criticism can pre- 
vent our praising, when he deserves it, the man who never 
knew the weaknesses of jealousy, and who never failed to be- 
stow eulogy upon every kind of talent without ever claiming 
any in return. In piiblishing the book we are, moreover, cer- 
tain that what to-day may appear praise, to-morrow will be 
tex'med justice. 

Lord Byron shone at a period when a school called Ro- 
mantic was in progress of formation. That school wanted a 
type by which to mould its heroes, as a planet requires a sun 
to give it light. It took Byron as that type, and adorned him 
Avith all the qualities which pleased its fancy, but the time has 
more than arrived when it is necessary that truth should re- 
veal him in his true light. My book is not likely to dispel 
every cloud, but a few shades only add to the lustre and bril- 
liancy of a landscape. 



LORD BYRON. 



"Others form the man: I tell of him." — Montaigne. 

At all times the world has been very unjust ; and (who 
does not know it ?) in the history of nations many an Aris- 
tides has paid with exile the price of his virtues and his popu- 
larity. Great men, great countries, whole nations, whole cen- 
turies, have had to bear up against injustice ; and the truth is, 
that vice has so often taken the place of virtue, evil of good, and 
error of truth, some have been judged so severely and others so 
leniently, that, could the book of redress be Avritten, not only 
would it be too voluminous, but it would also be too painful 
to peruse. Plonest people ,would feel shame to see the judg- 
ments before which many a great mind has had to bend ; and 
how often party spirit, either religious or political, moved by 
the basest passions — such as hatred, envy, rivalry, vengeance, 
fanaticistn, intolerance, self-love — has been a j^retext for distig- 
itring in the eyes of the public the greatest and noblest char- 
acters. It would then be seen how some censor (profiting by 
the breach- which circumstances, or even a slight fault on the 
part of these great minds, may have made, and joining issue 
witli other inferior judges of character) has often succeeded 
in throwing a shade on their glorious actions and in casting 
a slur upon their reputation, like those little insects which 
from their number actually succeed, notwithstanding their 
smallness, in darkening the rays of the sun. What is worse, 
however, is, that when history has once been erroneously writ- 
ten, and a hero has been put forward in colors which are not 
real, the public actually becomes accessory to the deception 
practiced upon it : for it becomes so enamored of the false 
type which has been held out to its admiration that it will 
not loosen its hold on it. Public opinion, once fixed, becomes 
a ])erfect despotism. 



16 Attacks upon 

Never, perhaps, has this phenomenon shown itself more 
visibly and more remarkably than in the case of Lord Byron. 
Not only was he a victim of these obstinate prejudices, but 
in his case the annihilation of truth and the creation of an 
imaginary type have been possible only at the cost of com- 
mon sense, and notwithstanding the most jDalpable contradic- 
tions. So that he has really proved to be one of the most cu- 
rious instances of the levity with which human judgments are 
formed, 

"We have elsewhere described the various phases of this 
phenomenon, one of the principal causes of which has been 
the resolution to identify the poet with the first heroes of his 
poems. Such a mode of proceeding was as disloyal as it was 
contrary to all the received rules of literature. It was in- 
spired by hatred and vengeance, adopted by an idle and frivo- 
lous public, and the result has proved to be something entire- 
ly opposed to the truth. 

As long as such a whimsical creation was harmless, it 
amused Byron himself and his friends; but the day came 
vv^hen it ceased to be harmless without ceasing to be eccen- 
tric, and became to Byron a true robe of Nessus. 

At his death the truth was demanded of his biographers ; 
but the puppet which had been erected stood there, and 
amazed the good, Avhile it served the malice of the wicked. 
His genius was analyzed, but no conscientious study of his 
character was made, and Byron, as man, remained an unknown 
personage. 

Yet among his biographers there were men of upright and 
enlightened minds : they did not all seek to raise themselves 
at the cost of depreciating him, nor to gain popularity by 
sj^aring individuals at the expense of Lord Byron, 

If among thera many proved to be black sheep, there were 
several, on the other hand, who were sincere, and even kindly 
disposed. Yet not one did full justice to Byron, not one de- 
fended liim as he deserved, not one explained his true charac- 
ter with the conscientious energy which in itself constitutes 
authority. We shall speak elsewhere of the causes which 
gave rise to this phenomenon. We shall mention the part 
which public opinion played in England when suddenly dis- 
pleased with a i^oet who dared sound the deepest recesses of 



Lord Bykon. 17 

the human heart ; and who as an artist and a psychologist 
was interested in watching the growth of every passion, and 
especially that of love, regardless of the conjugal felicity 
Avhich that public wished him to respect. It began to fear 
that its enthusiasm for Lord Byron was a national crime, and 
l»y degrees became accessory to the calumnies which were 
heaped ujDon his noble character, on account of his sujoposed 
want of patriotism, and his refusal to be blind to the defects 
of the mother-countiy. We shall see how his biographers, 
preferring invention to strict adherence to the truth, com- 
pounded a Lord Byron such as not to be any longer recogniz- 
able, and to become even — especially m France — a caricature. 
Of all this we shall speak hereafter. We shall now rather 
point to the curious than to the unjust character of this fact, 
and notice the contradictions to which Byron's biographers 
have lent themselves. 

All, or nearly all, have granted to him an infinity of virtues, 
and naturally fine qualities — such as sensitiveness, generosity, 
■frankness, humility, charity, soberness, greatness of soul, force 
of wnt, manly pride, and nobility of sentiment ; but, at the 
same time, they do not sufiiciently clear him of the faults 
which directly exclude the above-mentioned qualities. The 
moral man does not sufiiciently appear in their writings : they 
do not sufiiciently proclaim his character — one of the finest 
that was ever allied to a great intellect. Why ? Are these 
virtues such that, like excellent and salutary substances, they 
become poisoned when placed in contact within the same 
crucible ? 

In this refusal to do justice there is contradiction ; and as 
error exists where contradiction lies, it is precisely in that 
contradiction that we must seek the means of refuting error 
and assert the power of truth. 

Nature always proceeds logically, and the effect is always 
in direct analogy with its cause. Even in the moral Avorld the 
precise character of exact sciences must be found. If in a prob- 
lem we meet with a contradiction, are we not certain that its 
solution has been badly worked out, and that we must begin it 
over again to find a true result ? The same reasoning holds 
good for the moral spheres. When a judgment has been 
wrongly formed, that is, when there apj^ears to be contradic- 



18 xYttacks uroN 

lion between various opinions, that judgment must be remod- 
elled, the cause of the error must be looked for, truth must 
be sej^arated from falsehood, and regard must be had to the 
law which obliges us to weigh impartially every assertion, and 
to discuss equally the ayes and noes. Let this be done for 
Lord Byron. Let us analyze facts, question the eye-witness- 
es of his life, and peruse his admirable and simply-written 
letters, wherein his soul has, so to say, photographed itself. 
Acts are unquestionably more significative than words ; yet 
if we wish to inquire into his poetry, not by way of apprecia- 
ting his genius (with which at present we have nothing to do), 
but the nature of the man, let us do so loyally. Let us not 
attribute to him the character which he lends to his heroes, 
nor the customs which he attributes to them, sim^)ly because 
here and there he has given to the one something of his man- 
ner, to the other some of his sentiments ; or because he has 
harbored them, in the belief that hospitality can be extended 
to the wicked without the good suffering from it. 

Let us first examine " Childe Harold," — the poem which 
])rincipally contributed to mystify the public, and commenced 
that despotic type of which we have already spoken. 

Childe Harold does not tell his own story. His life is told 
by a poet. There are, therefore, two well-marked personages 
on the scene, perfectly distinct and different from one another. 
The first is the young nobleman in whom Byron intended to 
personify the precocious perversion of mind and soul of the 
age, and in general the biased existence of the young men of 
the day, of whom he had met many types at Cambridge, and 
on his first launch into society. The second is the minstrel 
who tells his story. 

The heart of the former is closed to all joy and to all the 
finest impulses of the soul ; whereas that of the other beats 
with delight at the prospect of all that is noble, great, good, 
and just in the world. Why identify the author rather Avith 
the one than Avith the other — with the former rather than 
with the latter ? Why take from him his own .sentiments, to 
give him those of his hero ? That hero can not be called mys- 
terious, since in his preface Byron tells us himself the moral 
object for which he has selected him. If Childe Harold per- 
sonifies Lord Byi'on, who will personify the poet ? • That poet 



Lord Byron. 19 

(and he is no other than Lord Byron) plays a far greater 
part than the hero. He is much oftener on the scene. In the 
greater part of the poem the minstrel alone speaks. In the 
ninety-three stanzas of which the first canto is composed, Har- 
old is on the scene during nineteen stanzas only, while the 
poet speaks in his own name during the seventy-four other 
stanzas, displaying a beautiful soul under various aspects, and 
exhibiting no melancholy other than that inherent to all ele- 
vated poetry. 

As for the second canto, it opens with a monologue of the 
minstrel, and Harold is foi'gotten until the sixteenth stanza. 
Then only does the melancholy hero appear, to disappear 
and reappear again for a few moments. But he rather seems 
to annoy the minstrel, who finishes at the seventy-third stanza 
by dismissing him altogether; and from that moment to the 
end of the canto the wretched and unamiable personage does 
not reappear. To whom, then, belong all the admirable senti- 
ments and all the virtuous aspirations which we read of to- 
ward the end of the canto ? — to whom, if not to the minstrel 
himself ? that is, to Lord Byron. What poet has paid so no- 
ble a tribute to every virtue ? Could that vigor and freshness 
of mind which breathe upon the lips of the poet, and which 
well belonged to him, suit the corrupted nature of Harold? 
If Byron dismisses his hero so often, it is because he experi- 
ences toward him the feelings of a logical moralist. 

Why then identify Lord Byron with a jjersonage he him- 
self disowns as his prototype, both in his notes, in his pref- 
ace, in his conversations ; and who is proved by facts, by the 
poem itself, and by the poet's logical and moral reasoning, to be 
entirely different from his creation ? It is true that Byron 
conceived the unfortunate idea of surrounding his hero by 
several incidents in his own existence, to place him in the so- 
cial circle to which he himself belonged, and to give him a 
mother and a sister, a disappointed love, a Newstead Abbey 
like his own, and to make him travel Avhere he had travelled, 
and experience the same adventures. 

That is true, and such an act of imprudence can only be 
explained, by the confidence on which he relied that the iden- 
tification could never have been thought of. At twenty-one 
conscience speaks louder than exj^erience. But if we can jus- 



20 Attacks upon 

tify the accusation of his having been imprudent, can we jus- 
tify his having been calumniated ? 

Eight years after the pubhcation of the second canto, By- 
ron wrote the third; and here the pilgrim occasionally ap- 
pears, but so changed that he seems to have been mei'ged into 
the poet, and to form with him one person only. Childe Har- 
old's sorrows are those of Lord Byron, but there no longer ex- 
ists any trace of misanthropy or of satiety. His heart already 
beats with that of the poet for chaste and devoted affections, 
for all the most amiable, the most noble, and the most siiblime 
of sentiments. He loves the flowers, the smiling and glorious, 
the charming and sublime aspect of nature. 

" Yet not insensible to all which here 
Awoke the jocund birds to earl\' song 
In glens which might have made even exile dear; 
Though on his brow were graven lines austere, 
And tranquil sternness, which had ta'en the place 
Of feelings fiercer far but less severe, 
Joy was not always absent from his face. 
But o'er it in such scenes would steal with transient trace." 

No longer, then, is satiety depicted tipon the pilgrim's 
brow, but " lines austere ;" and the poet seems so desirous of 
proving to us that Harold is metamorphosed, that when he ex- 
presses sentiments full of sympathy, humanity, and goodness, 
his horror for war and his dislike for the beauties of the 
Rhine, because — 

"A thousand battles have assail'd thj' banks," 
he takes care to add — 

"Thus Harold inly said" " . 

Harold, then, has ceased to be the w^eary hlase pilgrim of 
twenty-one, who in the first canto remains unmoved in pres- 
ence of the attractions of Florence the beautiful, who inspired 
the poet with such different sentiments that in the midst even 
of a storm which threatens to swallow, him up he actually 
finds strength enough to express his sentiments of real love 
for the lovely absent one — of a love, indeed, which is evident- 
ly returned. His heart, like the poet's, now beats with a pure 
love, and causes him to chant the absence of his friend in the 
most beautiful strain. Where is the old Harold ? It would 
seem as if the poet, tired of a companion so disagreeable and 



Lord Byron. 21 

so opposed to his tastes, and wishing to get rid of him but not 
knowing how, had first changed and moulded him to his own 
likeness by giving him his own sentiments, his own great heart, 
his own pains, his own affections,, and, not finding the change 
natural, had dismissed him altogether. And so it appears, 
for after the fifty-fifth stanza of the third canto, Childe Har- 
old disappears forever. Thus at the beginning of the fourth 
canto, which was published a year after, under the auspices of 
an Italian sky, the reader finds himself in the presence of the 
poet only. He meets in him a great and generous soul, but 
the victim of the most odious and immerited persecution, who 
takes his revenge in forgiving the wrongs which are done to 
him, and who reserves all his energies to consecrate them to 
the love of that which is lovable, to the admiration of that 
which calls for it, and who at twenty-nine years of age is im- 
bued with Christian and philosophical qualities, which his 
wearied hero could never have possessed. 

Why then again have identified Byron with Childe Har- 
old ? For what reason? It strikes us, that the simplest no- 
tions of fairness require us at least to take into account the 
words of the author himself, and to listen to the j^rotestations 
of a man who despised unmerited praise more than unjust re- 
proof. 

"A fictitious character," says Byron, "is introduced for 
the sake of giving some connection to the piece 

" It had been easy to varnish over his faults, to make him 
do more and express less, but he never was intended as an ex- 
ample, further than to show that early perversion of mind and 
morals leads to satiety of past pleasures and disappointment 
in new ones, and that even the beauties of nature and the stim- 
ulus of travel are lost on a soul so constituted, or rather mis- 
directed. 

" It- has been suggested to me by friends, on whose opin- 
ions I set a high value, that in this fictitious character, * Childe 
Harold,' I may incur the suspicion of having intended some 
real personage : this I bog leave once for all to disclaim — Har- 
old is the child of imagination, for the purpose I have stated. 
In some very trivial particiilars, and those merely local, there 
might be grounds for such a notion : but in the main points, 
I should hope, none whatever." 



22 Attacks upon 

Warned by his friends of the danger which there was for 
him in being identified with his hero, he paused before pub- 
lishing the poem. He had written it rather by way of recre- 
ation than for any other motive ; and when Dallas expressed 
to him his great desire to see the work published, Byron told 
him how unwilling he was that it should appear in print, and 
thus wrote to him, after having given way to Dallas's wishes in 
the matter : — 

" I must wish to avoid identifying Childe Harold's charac- 
ter with mine. If in certain passages it is believed that I 
wished to identify my hero with myself, believe that it is only 
in certain parts, and even then I shall not allow it. As for 
the manor of Childe Harold being an old monastic residence, 
I thought I might better describe what I have seen than what 
I invent. I would not for worlds be a man like my hero." 

A year after, in writing to Moore on the occasion of dedi- 
cating his " Corsair " to him, after saying that not only had 
his heroes been criticised, but that he had almost been made 
responsible for their acts as if they were personal to himself, 
he adds : 

" Those Avho know me are undeceived, and those who do 
not I have little interest in undeceiving. I have no particular 
desire that any but my acquaintance should think the author 
better than the beings of his imagining ; but I can not help a 
little surprise, and perhaps amusement, at some odd critical 
exceptions in the present instance, when I see several bards 
ia very reputable plight, and quite exempted from all partici- 
pation in the faults of their heroes, who nevertheless might 
be found with little more morality than the Giaour ; and per- 
haps — but no — I must admit Childe Harold to be a very re- 
pulsive personage, and as to his identity, those who like it 
must give him whatever alias they please." 

And in order to embrace the Avhole of his life in these quo- 
tations, we will add what he said at Cephalonia, to Dr. Ken- 
nedy, shortly before his death : — 

" I can not conceive why people will always mix xvp my 
own character and opinions, with those of the imaginary be- 
ings which, as a poet, I have the right and liberty to draw." 

"They certainly do not spare your lordship in that re- 
spect," replied Kennedy ; " and in ' Childe Harold,' ' Lara,' the 



. Lord Byron. 23 

' Giaour,' and ' Don Juan,' they are too much disposed to 
think that you paint in many instances yourself, and that 
these characters are only the vehicles for the expression of 
your own sentiments and feelings." 

" They do me great injustice," he replied, " and what was 
never before done to any poet. . . . But even in ' Don Juan ' 
I have been misunderstood. I take a vicious and unprinci- 
pled character, and lead him through those ranks of society 
whose high external accomplishments cover and cloak inter- 
nal and secret vices, and I paint the natural effects of such 
characters, and certainly they are not so highly colored as 
we find them in real life." 

" This may be true," said Kennedy, " but the question is, 
what are your motives and object for painting nothing but 
scenes of vice and folly ?" 

" To remove the cloak which the manners and maxims of 
society," said his lordship, "throw over their secret sins, and 
show them to the world as they really are. You have not," 
added he, "been so much in high and noble life as I have 
been ; but if you had fully entered into it, and seen what was 
going on, you would have felt convinced that it was time to 
unmask the specious hyprocrisy, and show it in its native 
colors !" 

Kennedy having then remarked that the lower and mid- 
dling classes of society never entertained the ojainion that the 
highest classes exhibited models of piety and virtue, and were, 
indeed, disposed to believe them worse than they really were, 
Byron replied : — 

" It is impossible you can believe the higher classes of so- 
ciety worse than they are in England, France, and Italy, for 
no language can sufficiently paint them." 

" But still, my lord, granting this, how is your book calcu- 
lated to improve them, and by what right, and under what 
title do you too come forward in this undertaking ?" 

" By the right," he replied, " which every one has who ab- 
hors vice united with hypocrisy. My plan is to lead Don Juan 
through various ranks of society and show that wherever you 
go vice is to be found." 

The doctor then observed, that satire had never done any 
good, or converted one man from vice to virtiie, and that while 



24 Attacks upon 

his satires were useless, they woukl call upon his head the 
disapproval both of the virtuous and the wicked. 

" But it is strange," answered Byron, " tliat I should be 
attacked on all sides, not only from magazines and reviews, 
but also from the pulpit. They preach against me as an ad- 
vocate of infidelity and immorality, and I have missed my 
mark sadly in having succeeded in pleasing nobody. That 
those whose vices I depicted and unmasked should cry out 
is natural, but that the friends of religion should do so is sur- 
l^rising : for you know," said he, smiling, " that I am assisting 
you in my own way as a poet, by endeavoring to convince 
people of their depravity ; for it is a doctrine of yours — is it 
not ? — that the human heart is corrupted ; and therefore if I 
show that it is so in those ranks which assume the external 
marks of politeness and benevolence, — having had the best 
opportunities, and better than most poets, of observing it, — 
am I not doing an essential service to your cause, by first con- 
vincing them of their sins, and thus enabling you to throw in 
your doctrine with more effect ?" 

"All this is true," said Kennedy ; " but you have not 
shown them what to do, however much you may have shown 
them what they are. You are like the surgeon who tears the 
bandages from the numerous wounds of his ulcerated patients, 
and, instead of giving fresh remedies, you expose them to the 
air and disgust of every bystander, who, laughing, exclaims, 
' How filthy these fellows are !' " 

" But I shall not be so bad as that," said Lord Byron ; 
^^ you 'shall see vihat a 2oindin{/ tip J shall give to the stot'i/.'''' 

The end was to justify and give a moral to every thing. 
While reproving, however, this system of identification, which 
not only leads to error but also to calumny, can it, however, 
be denied that there was not some reason, if not to justify it, 
at least to explain it ? To deny that there is, would, we think, 
be to commit another error. The nature of Lord Byron's 
genius, the cii'cumstances "of his life, the innate qualities of his 
heart and soul, "were unquestionably aids to his detractors. 

Upon the measure of the relations which existed between 
reality and fiction in his poems, and especially as applied to 
his own history, here are the words of Moore : — 

"As the mathematician of old required but a spot to stand 



Lord Byron. 25 

upon, to be able, as he boasted, to move the woiM, so a certain 
degree of foundation in fact seemed necessary to Byron, be- 
fore that lever which he knew how to apply to the world of 
the passions could be wielded by him. So small, however, 
was, in many instances, the connection with reality which sat- 
isfied him, that to aim at tracing through his stories these 
links with his own fate and fortunes, which were after all, 
perhaps, visible but to his own fancy, would be a task as un- 
certain as unsafe; and this remark applies not only to the 
' Bride of Abydos,' but to the ' Corsair,' ' Lara,' and all the 
other beautiful fictions that followed, in which, though the 
emotions expressed by the poet may be in general regarded 
as vivid recollections of what had at different times agitated 
his own bosom, there are but little grounds, however he might 
himself occasionally encourage such a supposition, for con- 
necting him personally with the groundwork or incidents of 
the stories." 

To analyze the analogies and differences which existed be- 
tween the personal character of Byron and that of the poet 
would form a very curious psychological study. It would be 
even an act of justice toward his memory, but one which 
would prove too long, and would ill suit these pages. Let us 
merely declare, that both analogies and differences have ex- 
isted, and that if the same can not be said of him as has been 
said of men of less renown, "the poet is different from the 
man," it must be allowed that in Byron the two characters 
were associated without being coupled. This association did 
not exist between himself and the creatures of his fancy, but 
merely with the principal features of his poetry, their energy 
and sensitiveness. As to certain analogies between his he- 
roes, or between them and himself, when they really exist, 
they should be pointed out; the duty of criticism being to 
discern and to point to the nature and limits of these analo- 
gies. 

When Byron began his travels, his genius ever sought an 
outlet. Too young to have as yet much experience, he had 
only made known what were his tendencies. 

The education of his genius began in his childhood, on the 
romantic banks of the Dee and on the shores of the ocean ; 
in the midst of the Scottish firs, in the house of his mother, 

B 



26 Early Years of 

which was peopled with reUcs of the past ; and at Newstead 
Abbey, situated in the heart of the romantic forest of Sher- 
wood, which is surrounded by the ruins of the great Norman 
abbeys, and teems Avith traditional recollections of Robin 
Hood. The character of that sympathetic chief of the out- 
laws, who was a nobleman by birth, and Avho was always fol- 
lowed by the lovely Marian, dressed up as a page ; his gen- 
erosity, his courage, his cleverness, his mixture of virtue and 
vice, his pride, his buoyant and chivalrous nature, his death 
even, which was so touching, must, to our mind, have pro- 
duced a powerful impi-ession upon one who, like Byron, was 
gifted with as much heart as imagination. At least the 
poet's fancy, if not the acts of the man himself, must have 
been influenced by these early impressions ; and, no doubt, 
Conrad, and other heroes of his early poems, must have 
sprung from the poet's recollections of the legendary stories 
in the midst of which he had been nursed. In any case, how- 
ever, the impressions which he had received did not affect his 
nature. 

He had, notwithstanding his youthful years, been able to 
show the measure, not the tendency of his genius, as Avell as 
his aversion for all that is artificial, superficial, insipid, and 
effeminate ; and he had proved that the two great character- 
istics of his nature were energy and sensitiveness. 

An education thus begun was to be continued and matured 
during his first voyage among scenes the most poetical and 
romantic in the world ; in the glorious East, where there ex- 
ists a perpetual contrast between the passionate nature of 
man and the soft hue of the heavens under the canopy of 
which he lives. 

The manners, character, ideas, and singular passions of 
those races, which civilization has not yet tamed down ; their 
energy, which often betrays itself in the perpetration of the 
greatest crimes, and as frequently in the practice of the finest 
qualities ; and the life which Byron was forced to lead among 
them, all produced a great impression upon his mind, and be- 
came precious materials to help the develoiMnent of his intel- 
lect. In the same way that, as it has been said, Salvator 
Rosa's encounters with bandits contributed to the develop- 
ment of his talent, so did the adventures of Lord Byron dur- 



Lord Byron-. 27 

ing this first journey contribute to form his particular taste. 
Had he always remained in the midst of extremely civilized 
nations, in which poetry and the great passions are lost, and 
the heart too often becomes cold, his mind might have devel- 
oped itself in a less brilliant and original manner. 

It was this extraordinary union of energy and sensitive- 
ness in Byron which was to determine the choice of subjects. 
No doubt the desire to produce an effect had a part in the 
selection, especially at the dawn of his genius ; and this would 
seem evident in the picture of satiated pleasure as represented 
by Childe Harold, and in the strange nature of Manfred. But 
this is only a portion of the reality. Plis principal qualities 
Avere the real arbiters in the selection of subjects which he 
made. God has not given to us all the same voice. The 
largest trees — the oaks — require the help of storms to make 
their voices heard, while the reed only needs the help of the 
summer breeze. 

Byron's attention was ever directed to what was uncom- 
mon, either in nature or in the human heart ; either in good 
or in evil, either in the ordinary course of things or beyond 
its limits. To the study of placid nature he preferred that of 
that soul which, though less well regulated, yet rises superior 
to fortune by its energy and will. 

The spark which lit up his genius could not live in that 
goodness which constituted the groundwork of his nature, 
but in passion, caUed forth by the sight of great misfortunes, 
great faults, great crimes, in fact, by the sight of all which 
attracted or repelled him, which was most in harmony with 
his energetic character, or at greatest variance with his sensi- 
tive nature. One of the motives which actuated his mind 
was sympathy — the other, antipathy; which exercised over 
him the same kind of fascination which the bird feels whom 
the serpent's glance has fascinated, or like the unaccountable 
impulse which causes a man to throw himself down the preci- 
pice on the verge of which he stands. 

The various aspects of nature exercised a similar influence 
over him. With his exquisite sense of their beauties, Byron 
no doubt often described the enchanting climates in the midst 
of which he placed the action of his poems ; but his jDen had 
always a manly action, with a mixture of grace and vigor in 



28 Introduction. 

it quite inimitable. His descriptions, however, always ap- 
peared to be secondary objects in his mind, and rather con- 
stituted the frames which encircled the man whom he wished 
to depict. 

One Avould say that the soft beauties of a landscape and 
the playful zephyrs which caress the crests of little waves 
were too effeminate subjects for him to dwell upon. His pref- 
erences evidently point to the savage side of nature, to the 
struggles between physical forces, to the subhmities of the 
tempest, and almost, I would say, to a certain disorganization 
of nature ; provided, of course, all is restored to order the mo- 
ment such a disorganization threatens the existence of beauty 
in art or in the moral world. 

At that time, what Byron could not find in his real and 
historical subject, he took from another reality, which Avas 
himself, — that is, his own qualities, the circumstances of his 
life, his tastes ; without ever inquiring whether Conrad's fear 
at the sight of the mysterious drop of blood on Gulnare's 
forehead was that of Byron, whether the Venetian renegade 
Alp could really experience the horror which Byron did at 
Constantinople at the sight of dogs feasting upon human car- 
casses ; or whether the association of the qualities with Avhich 
he idealized his heroes would not induce psychologists to ac- 
cuse him of sinning against truth, of destroying the unity of 
a Corsair's nature. 

In this Lord Byron confided in his powers. He felt that 
the love oit truth, and of what is beautiful, was too strong in 
him ever to depart from or cause him .to violate the essential 
rules of art ; but he wished to remain a poet while trusting 
in reality. 

When he went to the East, and found himself there in con- 
tact with outward circumstances so in harmony with the nat- 
ural bent of his views, and in presence of men like Ali Pasha, 
of whose victims he could almost hear the moans and the 
screams " in the clime " 

" Where all save the spirit of man is divine ; 

Where wild as the accents of lovers' farewell 
Are the hearts which they bear and the tales which they tell," 

he felt that he was at last in the land most likely to fire his 
natural genius, and to permit of his satisfying the imperious 



Lord Byron. 29 

want which his observing mind constantly experienced of 
resting upon reality and upon triith. The terrible Ali Pasha 
of Yanina was especially the type which attracted his notice. 
"Ali Pasha," says Gait, " is at the bottom of all his Oriental 
heroes. His ' Corsair ' is almost the history of Ali Pasha." 

In the " Bride of Abydos " the old Giaffir is again Ali. 
As for " Lara," it is thcwght that Byron conceived him on 
being very strongly impressed by the sight of a nobleman 
who was accused of murder, and who was pointed out to him 
at the Cagliari theatre. " I always thought," says Gait, who 
was present on the occasion, " that this incident had a share 
in the conception of 'Lara,' so small are the germs which 
fructify genius." The " Giaour " is due to a personal adven- 
ture of Byron's, in which he played, as was his wont, a most 
energetic and generous part. The origin of "Manfred' lies 
in the midst of sublime Alpine scenery, where, on a rock, By- 
ron discovered an inscription bearing the names of two broth- 
ers, one of whom had murdered the other at that spot. The 
history of Venice inspired him with Alp the renegade, who, 
disgusted with the unjust severities of his countrymen, turn- 
ed Mohammedan and swore vengeance against the land of his 
birth. 

It is, however, indispensable to remark, that in each of 
these characters there are two distinct realities. The one 
tries, by a display of too much energy, to overstep the limits 
of the natural; the other brings the subject back to its ti'ue 
proportions by idealizing it. The first is the result of the 
poet's observations of men and their customs, or of his study 
of history ; the other, by the impossibility which he knows to 
exist in him of departing from the rules of art by pushing- 
reality to- the point of making of it a positive suffering. In 
the first case his heroes are hke one another by their analogy 
in the use and abuse of strength ; in the other they are like 
Byron, because he has almost instilled a portion of his own life 
into them, in order to idealize them. 

Conrad is the real pirate of the ^gean Sea : independent, 
haughty, terrible in battle, full of energy and daring such as 
becomes the chief of corsairs, and such as Byron's study of 
the country where the action lies pointed out to him that such 
a man should be placed. But the poet describes himself when 



30 Introduction. 

he makes Conrad, at tlie risk of his own life, save women 
from a harem, or shudder at the sight of a drop of blood on 
the brow of a lovely maiden. The spot on Gulnare's fore- 
head, while causing him to suspect some crime, banishes all 
her charms in his eyes, and inspires him with the greater 
horror f]*om the fact that the love which she had sworn him 
probably inspired her with the foul act, to save his life and re- 
store him to liberty. He accuses himself with having been 
the involuntary cause of it, and feels that his gratitiide will be 
a torture ; his former love for Guhiare an impossibility. We 
find Byron's own nature again in the ascetic rule of life to 
which Conrad has subjected himself, and in his passionate 
and ideal tenderness for Medora, whose love, in his eyes, sur- 
passes all the happiness of this world, and whose death plunges 
him into irretrievable despair. 

In the " Siege of Corinth," Alp is the real type of the his- 
torical Venetian renegade, who is incapable of forgiveness, and 
who makes use of all his energies to gratify his revenge. 
But he represents Byron Avhen he speaks of the impressions 
which he felt under the starry canopy of heaven the night be- 
fore the battle, when bis imagination, taking him back to the 
happy, innocent days of his childhood, he contrasts them with 
the present, which for him is one of remorse, and when there 
glimmer still in his soul faint lights of humanity Avhich make 
him turn away from the horrible sight of dogs devouring the 
dead bodies of men. 

Byron speaks in his own person in the introduction of the 
" Giaour," which is replete with most exquisite beauty. In 
it he opens to the reader unexplored fields of delight, leads 
him through delicious countries where all is joy for the senses, 
where all recollections are a feast for the soul, and where his 
love of moral beauty is as strongly marked in his praise of 
olden Greece, as is his condemnation of modern degraded 
Greece. Byron speaks again in his own name when he puts 
invectives in the mouth of the Mussulman fisherman, and 
makes him curse so strongly the crime of the Giaour and the 
criminal himself, whose despair is the expiation of his crimes 
and the beautiful triumph of morality. 

In the " Bride of Abydos " (where the terrible Ali again 
comes forward in the shape of the old Giaifir) the amiable 



Lord Byron. 31 

auJ unfortunate Selim and the poet share the real sentiments 
of Byron. Byron is also himself when he adorns his heroine 
with every grace and perfection of body and soul, and also 
whenever it is necessary to idealize in order that a too rigor- 
ous imitation of reality may not offend either the laws of art 
or the feelings of the reader. As for " Don Juan," it is only 
fair to say that he in a measure deserved the persecution 
which it brought upon him. Yet, if we judge the poem with 
no preconceived severity, we shall find that, with the excep- 
tion of certain passages where he went beyond the limits pre- 
scribed to satire, from his hatred of hypocrisy, and also at 
times as a revenge against his persecutors, the poem is charm- 
ing. These passages he intended to suppress,* but death pre- 
vented him. This is greatly to be regretted, for otherwise 
" Don Juan " would have been the most charming satirical 
25oem in existence, and especially had not the last four cantos, 
written in Greece, been destroyed. The scene lay in England, 
and the views expressed in them explained many things 
which can never now be known. In allowing such an act to 
be committed for the sake of sparing the feelings of some in- 
fluential persons and national susceptibilities, Byron's friends 
failed in their duty to his memory, for the last four cantos 
gave the key to the previous ones, and justified them. From 
the moment Byron conceived "Don Juan" he steeled his 
heart against feeling ; and he kept to his resolution not to 
give way to his natural goodness of disposition, wishing the 
poem to be a satire as well as an act of revenge. Here and 
there, however, his great soul pierces through, and shows it- 
self in such a ti-ue light that Byron's jDortrait could be better 
drawn from passages of " Don Juan," than from any other of 
his poems.f We have sufficiently proved, we think, that the 

* He often told and promised his friends at Genoa that he would alter the 
passages which are unjust and reprehensible, and that, befoi'e it was finished, 
" Don Juan" would become a chaste and irreproachable satire. 

t " His manner was perhaps the more seductive, 

Because he ne'er seemed anxious to seduce; 

Nothing affected, studied, or constructive 
Of coxcombry or conquest : no abuse 

Of his attractions marr'd the fair perspective, 
To indicate a Cupidon broke loose. 

And seem to say, ' Resist us if you can' — 

Which makes a dandy while it spoils a man. 



32 Introduction, 

uniform character of Byron's heroes, which has been blamed 
by the poet's enemies, was merely the reflection of the moral 
beauty which he drew from himself. It might almost be said 
that the quahties with which he had been gifted 4)y Heaven 
conspired against him. 

We have been led to dwell upon this phase of his literary 
career, at the risk even of tiring the patience of the reader, 
from the necessity which we believe exists to destroy the 
phantom of identification which has been invoked, and to ex- 
plain the moral nature of Byron in its true light before ana- 
lyzing the poet under other aspects. It is not in " Harold " 
or in " Conrad," nor in any of his Oriental poems, that we are 
likely to trace the moral character of Byron, for, although it 
would be easy to detach the author's sentiments from those 
of the personages of these poems, yet they might offer a pre- 
text of blame to those who hate to look into a subject to dis- 
cover the truth which does not appear at first sight. Nor is 



"Don Juan was without it; 
In fact, his manner was his own alone: 
Sincere he was — 



"By nature soft, his whole address held off 

Suspicion : thouji;h not timid, his regard 

Was such as rather seem'd to keep aloof, 

To shield himself than put you on your guard. 



" Serene, accomplish'd, cheerful, but not loud, 

Insinuating without insinuation ; 
Observant of the foibles of the crowd, 

Yet ne'er betraying this in conversation; 
Proud with the proud, yet courteously proud, 

So as to make them feel he knew" his station 
And theirs:— without a struggle for priority 
He neither brook'd nor claim'd superiority. 



That is with men: with women he was what 
They pleased to make or take him for."— Can^o xr. 



"There was the purest Platonism at bottom 
Of all his feelings." — Canto x. 



LordByron. 33 

it in " Manfred " — the only one of his poems wherein, per- 
haps, reason may be said to be at fault, owaug to the sickness 
under which his soul labored at the time when it was written, 
and to his diseased imagination, produced by solitude and 
unmerited grief. In his lyrical poems Byron's soul must be 
sought. There he speaks and sings in his own name, express- 
es his own sentiments, breathes his own thoughts ; or, again, 
in his elegies and in his miscellaneous poems, in his dramas, 
in his mysteries, nay, even in his satires — the noble and cour- 
ageous independence of which has never been surpassed by 
any satirist, ancient or modern — and generally in all the 
poems which he wrote in Italy, and which might almost be 
called his second form. In these poems no medium is any 
longer required between his soul and that of the reader. It 
is not possible any longer to make any mistake about him in 
these. The melancholy and the energy displayed in them can 
not serve any more to give him the mask of a Conrad, or of 
a Harold, or of a misanthrope, or of a haughty individual, but 
they place in relief what there is of tendei", amiable, affection- 
ate sublime in those chosen beings whom God occasionally 
sends upon earth to testify here below of the things above : — 

" Per far di colassu fede fra noi." — Petrarch. 

Thus, in his elegy upon the death of Thyrza, "far too 
beautiful," says Moore, " and too pure to have been inspired 
by a mortal being," what pathos, what sensitiveness ! What 
charm in his sonnets to Guinevre ! What soft melancholy, 
what profound and intimate knowledge of the immortality 
and spirituality of our soul, in his Hebrew melodies ! " They 
seem as though they had been inspired by Isaiah and writ- 
ten by Shakspeare," says the Very Rev. Dr. Stanley, Dean - 
of Westminster. What touching family affection in his do- 
mestic poems, and what generosity in the avowal of certain 
wrongs ! What great and moral feeling pervade the two 
last cantos of " Childe Harold," melancholy though they be, 
like all things which are beautiful ! How one feels that the 
pain they tell of has its origin in unmerited persecution, and 
how his intellect came to his aid, and enabled him to bear 
with calmness the uncertainties incident to our nature ! What 
greatness of soul in the forgiveness of what to others would 

B2 



8-1 Introduction. 

seem unpardonable ! What love of humanity and of its 
rights ! What hatred of injustice, tyranny, and oppression 
in the " Ode to Venice," in " The Lament of Tasso," in " The 
Prophecy of Dante," and in general in all his latter poems, 
even in the " Isle," a poem little known, which was written a 
short time before he left Genoa for Greece. Here, more than 
in any other of his poems, we see the admirable peace of 
mind which he had created for himself, and how far too high 
his great intellect soared to be any longer moved by the 
world's injustice. 

Quotations from his poems w^ould be impossible. How 
choose without regretting what has been discarded ?» They 
must be read ; and those must be pitied who do not feel mor- 
ally better after having read them. 

This is precisely what has been least done up to the present 
time : people have been content with reading his early poems, 
and with seeking Byron in " Childe Harold " or in the heroes 
of his Oriental poems ; which is about as just as to look for 
Shakspeare in lago, Milton in Satan, Goethe in Mephistophe- 
les, or Lamartine in the blasphemies of his ninth Meditation. 

Thus French critics, — disposed to identify the man with 
the imaginary beings of his poems, and neglecting to seek him 
where they could have found him, relying upon judgments 
formed in England, and too often by people prejudiced against 
Byron, — have themselves adopted false views with respect to 
the author and his works. Thus, again, poetry — which with- 
out any preconceived teaching or any particular doctrine of 
its own, without transgressing the rules laid down by art, 
moved the soul, purified and elevated it, and taught it to de- 
spise the base and cowardly desires of nature, and excited in 
it the admiration of all that is noble and heroic, — was declared 
to be suspicious even in France, because too often it had pro- 
claimed openly the truth where one would have wished truth 
to have been disguised. Many would fain have thought oth- 
erwise, but they preferred remaining silent, and to draw from 
that poetry the poetical riches of which they might be in 
want. 

Our intention being to consecrate a chapter to the exami- 
nation of the moral tendency of Byron's poetry, we will not now 
say more. We must add, however, that these views which 



Lord Byron. 35 

had been so easily adopted in France were not those of the 
majority of right-thinking persons in England, although they 
dared not proclaim their opinions then as they can now. 

I shall only quote the opinion of two Englishmen of great 
merit (Moore and Sir Egerton Brydges), who can neither one 
nor the other be suspected of partiality ; the first, on account 
of his great fear of ever wounding the susceptibilities of his 
countrymen, the other by the independence and nobility of his 
character. 

" How few are the pages in his poems," says Moore, " even 
if perused rapidly, which by their natural tendency towai'd 
virtue, or some splendid tribute to the greatness of God's 
Avorks, or by an explosion of natural piety more touching than 
any homily, do not entitle him to be admitted in the purest 
temple of which Christianity may have the keep !" — Moore, 
vol. ii. 

Sir Egerton Brydges, after having fully appreciated the po- 
ems of Lord Byron, says : — 

" They give to the reader's best instincts an impulse which 
elevates, purifies, instructs, charms, and affords us lihe noblest 
and purest of joys." — Sir E. Brydges, vol. x. p. 141. 

These quotations perhaps will be found too many, but are 
they not necessary ? Is truth which can be so easily changed 
equally easy to re-establish ? Are not a thousand words 
wanted to restore a reputation which a light word oi', may be, 
slight malice has tarnished ? If the author of these pages 
only exj)ressed individual opinions without adducing any proof, 
that is to say, without accompanying them with the disinter- 
ested and enlightened testimonies of people who have known 
Byron personally, these volumes might gain in interest by be- 
ing condensed in a shorter space. 

But in shortening the road would the author attain the de- 
sired end? would the self-imposed task be fulfilled? would 
his or her own convictions become those of others ? Should 
not authors sacrifice themselves to their subject in all works 
inspired by a devoted spirit ? Shall it be said that oftentimes 
one has wished to prove what had already been conceded by 
every body ? that the value of the proofs adduced is lessened 
by the fact that they are nearly all already known ? In an- 
swer, and without noticiner the words " nearlv all," he misht 



36 Introduction. 

say that, as truth has several aspects, one may almost, without 
mentioning new facts, arrive at being what might be called 
the guide in the tour round the soul, and fathom its depth in 
search of the reality; just as when we have looked at all the 
sides of a picture, we return to it, in order to find in it fresh 
beauties which may have escaped our notice on a first inspec- 
tion. There are certain souls, to fathom which it is absolute- 
ly necessary to employ a retrospective method ; in the same 
way that the pictures, for instance, of Salvator Rosa enchant 
on close inspection of the great beauties which in some lights 
seem hid by a mass of clouds. 

" One can hardly employ too many means," says Ste. Beuve, 
" to know a man ; that is, to understand him to be something 
more than an intellectual being. As long as we have not ask- 
ed ourselves a certain number of questions about such and 
such an author, and as long as they have not been satisfacto- 
rily answered, we are not sure* of having completely made him 
out, even were such questions to be wholly irrelevant to the 
subjects upon which he has written. 

'' WhatMid he think upon religious matters ? 

" How did the aspect of nature affect him ? 

" How did he behave in regard to women ? 

" How about money ? 

" What rules did he follow ? 

" What was his daily life ? etc., etc. 

" Finally, what was his peculiar vice and foible ? Every 
man has one. 

" Not one of these questions is unimportant in order to ap- 
preciate an author or his book, provided the book does not 
treat of pure mathematics ; and especially if it is a literary 
work, that is to say, a book wherein there is something about 
every thing."* 

Be this opinion of an eminent critic our rule and an en- 
couragement to our efforts. 

We are well aware that in France, now-a-days, writers do 
not like to use the same materials in describing a character 
as are used by other nations, and especially by England. A 
Study of this kind in France must not be a judgment pro- 

* Ste. Beuve, "Noviveaux Lundis," vol. iii. p. 28. 



Lord Byron. 37 

nounced upon the individual who is the object of it, and still 
less an inquiry. The qualities and defects of a man of gen- 
ius do not constitute the principal business of the artist. 
Man is now rather examined as a work of art or as an object 
of science. When reason has made him out, and intellectual 
curiosity has been satisfied, the wish to understand him is not 
carried out further. The subject is abandoned, lest the read- 
er may be tired. 

This may be good reasoning in many cases ; but in the 
present perhaps • the best rule is " in medio tutissimus. ' 
When a good painting is spoilt by overpolish, to wash the 
polish off is not to restore it to its former appearance. To 
arrive at this last result, however, no pains should be spared ; 
and upon this principle we must act with regard to Byron. 
In psychological studies the whole depends upon aU the parts, 
and what may at first seem unimportant may prove to be the 
best confirmation of the thesis. ' To be stoj^ped by do^tjjs (I 
might almost say repetitions) would therefore be to exhibit a 
fear in adducing proof. 

Can it be said that we have not sufficiently condemned? 
To add this interest to the volume would not have been a dif- 
ficult task. 

To attack is easier than to defend ; but we should then 
have had to invent our facts, and, at the same time, to add ro- 
mance to history. 

The world, says a great moralist of our times, prefers a 
vice which amuses it rather than a virtue which bores it ; 
but our respect for the reader convinces us that the adoption 
of such a means of arriving at success would forfeit their 
respect for us and be as repugnant to their sense of justice as 
to our own. As regards Byron, the means have more than 
once been employed, and with the more success by those who 
liave united to their skill the charms of style. 

But in claiming no talent, no power to interest, and in re- 
fusmg to appear as an author from motives of pusillanimity, 
idleness, or self-love, is one less excusable for hiding the truth 
when one is acquainted with it ? 

It it is the duty of a man of honor and a Christian to come 
to the rescue of a victim to violence when it is in one's power, 
is it n^ incumbent upon one to raise a voice in the defense 



38 Introductiox. 

of those who can no longer resent an insult, when we know 
that they are wrongly accused ? To be silent under such cir- 
cumstances would be productive of remorse ; and the remorse 
is greater when felt on the score of those whose genius con- 
stitutes the monopoly of the whole world, and forms part of 
the common treasure of humanity, which enjoins that it should 
be respected. 

Is not their reputation a part of the inherited treasure? 
To allow such reputation to be outraged would, in our minds, 
be as culpable as to hide a portion of a treasure which is not 
our own. 

" Truth," says Lamartine, " does not require style. Its light 
shines of itself; its appeai'ance is its proof.'' 

In publishing these pages, written conscientiously and scru- 
pulously, we confide in the opinion exi^ressed above in the 
magic language of the man who can create any prestige. If 
the reader finds these guarantees of truth sufficient, and deigns 
to accept our conscientious remarks with indulgence and kind- 
ness ; if, after examining Byron's character under all its as- 
pects, after repeating his words, recalling his acts, and speak- 
ing of his life — esjDecially of that Avhich he led in Italy — and 
mentioning the various impressions which he produced upon 
those who knew him personally, we are justified in the reader's 
opinion in having endeavored to clear the reality from all the 
clouds which imagination has gathered round the person of 
Byron, and in trying to earn for his memory a little sympathy 
by proclaiming the truth, in place of the antipathy which 
falsehood has hitherto obtained for him, our object will have 
been obtained. 

To endeavor to restore Byron's reputation is the more nec- 
essary, since Moore himself, Avho is his best biographer, failed 
not only in his duty as a friend, but as the historian of the 
poet's life : for he knew the truth, and dared not proclaim it. 
Who, for instance, could better inform us of the cause which 
led to Byron's separation from his wife? And yet Moore 
chose to keep the matter secret. 

Who was better acquainted with the conduct of Byron's 
colleagues at the time of his conjugal differences — with the 
curious proposals which were made to him by them to recov- 
er their good graces — with his refusal to regain them ftt such 



Lord Byron. 39 

a cost — with the persecution to which he was, after that, sub- 
jected — with the names of the people who instigated a pop- 
ular demonstration against him — with all the bad treatment 
which obliged him to quit England? And yet has Moore 
spoken of it ?* 

Who, better than Moore, could tell of the friends on whom 
Byron relied, and who at the time of his divorce sided with 
Lady Byron, and even Avent so far as to aggravate the case by 
falsely publishing reports of his having ill-treated Lady Byron 
and discharged loaded guns in order to frighten her ? 

Who was better acquainted with the fact that the last can- 
tos of " Don Juan," written in Greece, had been destroyed in 
England, and that the journal which he kept after his depart- 
ure from Genoa had been destroyed in Greece ? Moore knew 
it very well, and did not reveal these facts, lest he should cre- 
ate enemies for himself. He actually went so far as to pre- 
tend that Byron never wrote any thing in Greece.f 

* When the persecution to which Lord Byron was exposed by his separation 
had attained its greatest height, an influential person — not belonging; to the peer- 
age — came to visit him, and told him that, if he wished to see how far the follv 
of men went, he had only to give orders for having it shown that nothing said 
against him was true, but that then lie must change politics and come over to 
the Tory part}'. Lord Byron replied that he would prefer death and all kinds of 
tortures to such meanness. Hereupon the person in question said that lie must 
suffer the consequences, which would be heavy, since his collejigues were deter- 
mined on his ruin, out of party spirit and political hatred. It was at this time 
that, going one day to the House, he was insulted by the populace, and even treat- 
ed in it like an outlaw. No one spoke to him, nor approached to give any ex- 
planation of such a proceeding, except Lord Holland, wlio was always kind to 
him, and indeed to every one else. Others — such as the Duke of Sussex, Lord 
Minto, Lord Lansdowne and Lord Grey — would fain have acted in a like manner ; 
but they suffered themselves to be influenced by his enemies, among wliom more 
than one was animated by personal rancor because the young lord had laughed at 
them and shown up their incapacity. 

Lord BjTon, finding himself received in this way by his colleagues, pretended 
not to see it, and after a few moments quitted the House, never more to set foot 
within it. 

t Lord Byron's mind, incapable of idleness, was constantly at work, even de- 
spite himself and amid pressing active occupations. During his stay in the Ion- 
ian Islands, Missolonghi, he wrote five cantos of Don Juan. The scene of the 
cantos that followed was laid first in England and tlien in Greece. The places cho- 
sen for the action naturally rendered these last cantos the most interesting, and, 
besides, they explained a host of things quite justifying them. They were taken 
to England with Lord Byron's other papers ; but there they were probably consid- 
ered not sufficiently respectful toward England, on which they formed a sort of 
.satire too outspolcen with regard to living personages, and doubtless it was deemed 
an act of patriotism to destroy them. And so the world was deprived of them. 

Lord Byron had also kept a journal since the day of his departure frnm Genoa 



40 Introduction. 

Who better than Moore knew that Byron was not irrelig- 
ious ? — And yet he pretended that he was. And finally, Who 
was better aware that Byron's greatest aim was to be useful to 
humanity, and yet encouraged the belief that Byron's expedi- 
tion to Greece was purely to satisfy the desire that people 
should speak of him as a superior man? In a few words, 
Moore has not made the best of Byron's qualities, has kept si- 
lence over many things which might have enhanced his char- 
acter in public opinion ; and wished, above all, to show the 
greatness of his poetical genius, which was never questioned. 
One would almost say that Moore did not like Byron to be 
too well spoken of : for whenever he praises, he ever accom- 
panies the praise with a blame, a " but " or an " if ;" and in- 
stead of openly contradicting accusations which he knew to be 
false, and honestly proclaiming the truth, he, too, preferred to 
excuse the poet's supposed shortcomings. Moore was want- 
ing in courage. He was good, amiable, and clever ; but weak, 
poor, and a lover of rank — where, naturally, he met with many 
political enemies of Byron. He, therefore, dared not then tell 
the truth, having too many interests to consider. Hence his 
concessions and his sluggishness in leaving the facts as they 
were ; and in many cases, when it was a question between the 
departed Byron and one of his high detractors, the one sacri- 
ficed was the dead friend who could no longer defend himself. 
All such considerations for the living were wrongs toward the 
memory of Byron. 

Tlie gravest accusation, however, to which Moore is open 
is, that he did not preserve the Memoirs which Byron gave 
him on the sworn condition that nothing should prevent their 
publication. The promise thus given had restored peace to 
Byron's mind, so confident was he that it would be fulfilled. 
To have broken his word is a crime for which posterity will 
never forgive Moore. Can it be alleged, by way of excuse, 

up to the time when illness made the pen drop from his hand. To it he had con- 
signed his most intimate thoughts ; and we may well imagine how full of interest 
it must have been, written amid all the emotions agitating his soul at that time. 
This journal was found among his papers by a personage of high standing in 
Greece, who was the first to inspect them, and who, seeing his own name and 
conduct mentioned in no flattering terms, desti-oyed them in order to hide from 
England the unvarnished truth told of himself. Count Gamba often speaks of 
this journal in the letters addressed at this period to his sister. 

We leave the reader to make his own comments on these too regrettable facts. 



Lord Byron. 41 

that he gave extracts from it ? But besides the authenticity 
of the extracts, which might be questioned, of what value can 
be a composition like Moore's in presence of Byron's very 
words? No one can pretend to be identified with such a 
mind as Byron's in the expression of his own feelings ; and, 
least of all, a character like Moore's. 

The " Memoirs," then, which were the justification of By- 
ron's life; the last cantos, which were the justification of the 
poet and of the man ; the journal, which showed his prudence 
and sagacity beyond his age, which by the simple relation of 
facts proved how he had got rid of all the imperfections of 
youth, and at last become the follower of wisdom, so much so 
that he would have been one of the most virtuous men in En- 
gland — all have been lost to the world : they have descended 
with him into the tomb, and thus made room for the malice 
of his detractors. Hence the duty of not remaining silent on 
the subject of this highly-gifted man. 

In restoring, however, facts to their true light, we do not 
pretend to make Byron apj^ear always superior to humanity 
in his conduct as a man and a poet. Could he, with so sensi- 
tive and passionate a nature as his was, and living only that 
period when passions are strongest, have always acted as those 
who from age no longer are affected by them ? If it is easy 
not to give way to our passions at seventy, is it equally so at 
twenty or at thirty ? 

Persecuted as he was, could Byron be expected to remain 
unmoved? If his passion for truth made him inexorable in 
some of his poems ; if his passion for justice allowed his pen 
at times to go beyond the limits which it should have respect- 
ed ; if even at times he was unjust, because he had been too 
much injured and irritated, — he undoubtedly would have com- 
pensated for his involuntary and slight offenses, had he not 
been carried off so early. 

As for the imperfection of these pages, — once we have dis- 
sipated error, and caused truth to be definitely received as 
regards Byron, — an abler pen can easily correct it, and do away 
with the numberless repetitions with "wiiich we are aware we 
shall be reproached. We could not do otherwise, as we wish- 
ed to multiply proofs. Others, some day, will achieve what 
we have been unable to perform. 



42 Introduction. 

Our work is like tlie stream which falls from the mountain 
and is filled with ooze : its only merit is to swell the river into 
which it runs. But, sooner or later, a stronger current will 
purify it, and give clearness and brilliancy to it, without taking 
from it the merit of having increased the bulk of the waters. 

Such as it is, we dedicate this humble work to the noble 
souls who worship truth. They will feel that we have been 
able to place them in a more intinaate connection with another 
great mind, and thus we shall have gained our reward. 



CHAPTER I. 

LOKD BYRON AND M. DE LAMAETINE. 

To Count (le . 

Paris, 17th June, 1860. 
My Dear Count, — Confiding in youi- willingness to oblige, 
I beg to ask a favor and your advice. I received, a short 
time ago, a prospectus of a subscription to be raised for a 
general addition of the works of M. de Lamartine. You are 
aware that when it is a question of showing my sympathy 
for M. de Lamartine I would never miss the opportunity of 
doing so ; but on this occasion I see on the programme the 
promise of a Life of Lord Byron. Such an announcement 
must alarm the friends of that great man ; for they remember 
too vividly the sixteenth number of the " Cours Litteraire " 
to subscribe hastily to a work when they have not more in- 
formation than is therein given. You, who forget nothing, 
must probably remember the strange judgment of Byron 
formed by M. de Lamartine in that article. Identifying the 
man with the poet, and associating his great name with that 
of Heine on account of some rather hazardous lines in " Don 
Juan," and forgetting the license allowed to such poetry — an 
imitation of the Italian poets Berni, Ariosto, Pulci, Buratti — 
M. de Lamartine did not forget a few personal attacks upon 
himself, and called Byron the founder of the school for pro- 
moting Satanic laughter, while he heaped upon him the most 
monstrous accusations. M. de Lamartine ventured to say of 
Byron things which even his greatest enemies never dared to 
utter at that time when in England it was the custom to revile 
him. Although the time has not yet come when Lord By- 
ron's life should be written, since the true sources of collect- 
ing information respecting him are unattainable so long as 
the people live to whom his letters were addressed, still it is 
easy to perceive that the time has at length arrived when iu 



44 Lord Byron and M. De Lamartine. 

England the desire to do him justice and fairly to examine 
his merits is felt by the nation generally. Moore, Parry, Med- 
win, etc., have already attemjDted to make known the charac- 
ter of the man as distinct from that of the j^oet. They no 
lonsrer souo:ht to find in him a resemblance with Childe Har- 
old, or the Corsair, or Manfi-ed, or Don Juan, nor to judge of 
him by the conversations in which he sought to mystify those 
with whom he conversed ; but they judged him by his acts 
and by his correspondence. 

If so happy a reaction, however, is visible in England the 
same can not be said of France, where there being no time to 
read what is published elsewhere, an error is too soon em- 
braced and ingrafted on the mind of the public as a consequence 
of a certam method which dispenses with all research. Hence 
the imaginary creation which has been called Byron, and 
which has been maintained in France notwithstanding its be- 
ing wholly unacceptable as a portrait of the man, and totally 
different from the Byron known personally to some happy 
few who had the pleasure of beholding in him the handsomest, 
the most amiable of men, and the greatest genius whom God 
has created. 

But M. de Lamartine, who wishes particularly to show the 
character of the man, instead of adding to the numerous proofs 
of courage and grandeur of mind Avhich he has personally 
shown to the world — that of confessing that he has erred in his 
judgment of Byron — endeavors to study him only in his 
works. But in doing this, and even though a moral object 
may be found in each of Byron's Avorks, it strikes us that M. 
de Lamartine would have done better to pursue this line in 
the analysis of the intellectual part of the man, and not the 
moral side. 

"You err" (wrote Byron to Moore on the occasion of the 
latter saying that such a poem as the " Vision of Judgment " 
could not have been written in a desponding mood) : " a man's 
poetry is a distinct faculty or soul, and has no more to do with 
the every-day individual than the inspiration of the Python- 
ess when removed from her tripod." To which Moore ob- 
serves : " My remark has been hasty and inconsiderate, and 
Lord Byron's is the view borne out by all experience. Al- 
most all the tragic and gloomy writers have been, in social 



Lord Byron and M. De Lamartine. 45 

life, mirthful persons. The author of the ' Night Thoughts ' 
was a fellow of infinite jest; and of the pathetic Otway, Pope 
says, ' He ! why, he would laugh all the day long ; he would 
do nothing but laugh !' " 

It is known that many licentious writers have led very reg- 
ular and chaste lives ; that many who have sung their success 
with women have not dared to declare their love to one wom- 
an; that all Sterne's sentiment was perfectly ideal, and pro- 
ceeded always from the head and never from the heart ; that 
Seneca's morality was no barrier to his practicing usury ; and 
that, according to Plutarch, Demosthenes was a very question- 
able moralist in practice. Why, then, necessarily conclude 
that a moralist is a moral man, or a sarcastic satirist a deceit- 
ful one, or the man who describes scenes of blood and carnage 
a monster of cruelty? Does not Montaigne say of authors 
that they must be judged by their merits, and not by their 
morals, nor by that show of works which they exhibit to the 
world. Why, then, does M. Lamartine appreciate Byron ac- 
cording to his satirical works, when all those who knew him 
assert that his real character was very different to his literary 
one ? He did not personify, but create his heroes ; which are 
two very different things. 

Like Salvator Rosa, Avho, the meekest of men in private 
life, could only find a vent to his talent by painting scenes of 
brigandage and horror, so did Byron's genius require to go 
down into the darkest recesses of the passions which generate 
remorse, crime, and heroism, to find that s^iark which fired his 
genius. But it must be owned, that even his great qualities 
were causes of the false judgment of the world upon him. 
Thus, in describing Childe Harold, he no doubt wished to 
paint a side of nature which had not yet been seen. At the 
scenes of despair, at the scenes of doubt which assail him, the 
poet assists I'ather as the historian than as the actor. And the 
same holds good for other poems, where he describes those 
peculiar diseases of the mind which great geniuses alone can 
comprehend, though they need not have experienced them. 
But it was the very life which he infused into his heroes that 
made it appear as if they could not personify any one but 
himself. And as to their faults, because he was wont to give 
them his qualities, it was argued, that since the latter were 



46 Lord Byron and M. De Lamartine. 

observable to be common to the author and the creations of 
his fancy, the faults of these must likewise be his. If only 
the faults, why not also the crimes ? Thus it came that, car- 
ino- little for their want of argument, Byron's enemies erected 
themselves into avengers of too much talent bestowed upon 
one single man. 

Byron might have taken up his own defense, but did not 
care to do so, or did it carelessly in some letters written to in- 
timate friends. To Moore he Avrote : — " Like all imaginative 
men, I, of course, embody myself with the character while I 
draw it ; but not a moment after the pen is from the paper." 
He always, however, begged that he might be judged by his 
acts ; and a short time before he died at Missolonghi, after 
recommending Colonel Stanhope to desist from then j^ressing 
the necessity of giving liberty to the press, and from recom- 
mending the works of Bentham to a people who could not 
even read, Byron replied to the colonel's rather hasty remarks, 
" Judge me by my acts." This request he had often repeat- 
ed, as his life was not one of those which fear the light of day. 
All in vain. His enemies were not satisfied with this means 
of putting an end to their calumnies. 

Where does M. de Lamartine find the truth which he pro- 
poses to tell the world about Byron ? Not surely among the 
writers whose biographies of Byron were either works of re- 
venge or of speculation, and sometimes both. Not in the 
conversations which Byron had with several people, and on 
the credulity of whom he loved to speculate. It can not, 
therefore, be in the biographies of men who have written er- 
roneously, and have not understood their subject; but in 
Moore, in Parry, in Count Gamba's works, and, may be, in a 
few others. I am, however, far from saying, that Moore has 
acted toward Lord Byron with all that friendly feeling which 
Byron recommended to him on asking him to write the Life 
of Sheridan, " without offending the living or insulting the 
dead." Quite the contrary. I take it that Moore has wholly 
disregarded his duties as a true friend, 'by publishing essen- 
tially private letters, by introducing into his books certain 
anecdotes which he might, if even they were true, have ad- 
vantageously left out ; and in failing, from fear of wounding 
living susceptibilities, to assert Avith energy that which he 



Lord Byron and M. De Lamartine. 47 

knew to be the real case with Byron. More than any one, 
Moore experienced the fatal influence which injures independ- 
ence in aristocratic England, An Irishman by birth, and a 
commoner, Moore was flattered to find himself elevated by 
his talents to a position in aristocratic circles which he owed 
to his talents, but which he was loath to resign. The English 
aristocracy then formed a kind of clique whose wish it was to 
govern England on the condition that its secret of governing 
should not be revealed, and was furious with Byron, who was 
one of them, for revealing their weaknesses and upbraiding 
their pretensions. Moore A\dshed to live among the statesmen 
and noblemen whose despotic views and bad policy Byron 
had openly condemned, and among those lovely islanders in 
whose number there might be found more Adelinas than Au- 
roras, and to whom Byron had preferred foreign beauties. 
Moore, in short, wished to live with the literary men whom 
Byron had ridiculed in his satires, and among the high clergy, 
then as intolerant as they were hypocritical, and who, as By- 
ron said, forgot Christ alone in their Christianity. Moore, 
whose necessity it had become to live among these open re- 
vilers and enemies of Byron, after allowing the memoirs of 
Byron to be burnt, because in them some of the above-named 
personages were unmasked, this Moore was weak enough not 
to proclaim energetically that Byron's character was as great 
as his genius, but to do so only timidly. By way of obtain- 
ing pardon even for this mite of justice to the friend who 
Avas gone, Moore actually condescended to associate himself 
with those who pleaded extenuating circumstances for Byron's 
temper, like Walter Scott and other poets. But truth comes 
out, nevertheless, in Moore ; and in the perusal of Byron's 
truthful and simple letters we find him there displayed in all 
his admirable and unique worth as an intellectual and a moral 
man. We find him adoi'ned with all the virtues which Heaven 
gave him at his birth ; his real goodness, which neither in- 
justice nor misfortune could alter ; his generosity, w^hich not 
only made him disbelieve in ingratitude, but actually incited 
him to render good for evil and obliged him to own that " he 
could not keep his resentments ;" his gratitude for the little 
that is done for him ; his sincerity ; his openness of character; 
his greatJiess and disinterestedness. " His very failings were 



48 Lord Byron and M. De Lamartine, 

those of a sincere, a generous, and a noble mind," says a bi- 
ographer who knew him well. His contempt for base ac- 
tions ; his love of equity ; his passion for truth, which was car- 
ried almost to a hatred of cant and hypocrisy, were the im- 
mediate causes of his want of fairness in his opinion of him- 
self and of his self-accusation of things most contrary to his 
nature. 

So singular a trait in his character was by no means the 
result of eccentricity, but the result of an excejitional assembly 
of rare qualities which met for the first time in one man, and 
which, shining in the midst of a most corrupt society, consti- 
tuted almost more an anomaly which became a real defect, 
hurtful, however, to himself only. His ideal of the beautiful 
magnified weaknesses into crimes, and physical failings into 
deformities. Thus it is that with the saints the slightest 
transgression of the laws appears at once in the light of mor- 
tal sin. St. Augustin calls the greediness of his youth a crime. 
The result of all this was that his very virtues mystified the 
world and caused it to believe that the faults which he attrib- 
uted to himself were nothing in comparison of those which he 
really had. 

Byron, however, was indignant at being so unfairly treated. 
He treated with contempt the men who calumniated him, and 
as if they were idiots. He can safely, therefore, be blamed 
for not urging enough his own defense. This, to my mind, 
constitutes his capital fault, unless one considers defects of 
character those changes of humor which i*apidly passed from 
gayety to melancholy, or his pretended irritability, which was 
merely a slight disposition to be impatient. These were all 
the result of his poetical nature, added to the effects of early 
education and to those of certain family circumstances. It 
would be too hard and too unfair to attiibute these slight 
weaknesses of character proper to great genius to a bad nature 
or to misanthropy. 

Had Lord Byron not been impatient he must have been 
satisfied with his own condition and indifferent to that of oth- 
ers. In other words, he must have been an egotist, which he 
was not. He was gay by nature, and repeatedly showed it ; 
but he had been sorely wounded by the injustice of men, and 
his marriage with Miss Milbank had undermined his peace 



Lord Byron and M. De Lamartine. 49 

and happiness. How, then, could he escape the occasional 
pangs of gi'ief, and not betray outwardly the pain which de- 
voured him inwardly. In such moments it was a relief to him 
to heave a sigli, or take up a pen to vent his grief in rhyme. 
His misanthropy was quite foreign to his nature. All those 
who knew him can bear testimony to the falseness of the ac- 
cusation. 

Moore, who knew him so well, and who always speaks the 
truth when no longer under the influences which at times 
overpower him, after speaking of the charm of Byron's man- 
ner when he saw him for the first time, ends by saying : " It 
may be asserted that never did there exist before, and it is 
most probable never will exist again, a combination of such 
vast mental j^tower and surpassing genius, with so many others 
of those advantages and attractions by which the world is in 
general dazzled and captivated." 

When, therefore, M. de Lamartine seeks the truth in Moore, 
Parry, and some other biographers respecting Byron, he will 
find that this eminently beautiful form was in harmony with 
the splendid intellect and moral qualities of the man, M. de 
Lamartine will see that Byron was a good and devoted son, a 
tender father and brother, a faithful friend, and indulgent 
master, beloved by all who ever knew him, and who was nev- 
er accused, even by his enemies, of having tried to seduce an 
innocent young girl, or having disturbed the peace of conjugal 
bliss. He will behold his charity, which was universal and 
unbounded ; a pride which never stoojjed to be subservient of 
those in power ; a firm political faith ; a contempt of public 
dignities, so far as they reflected glory upon himself; and 
such a spii-it of humility that he was ever ready to blame him- 
self and follow the advice of those whom he deemed to be an- 
imated by no hostile spirit against himself. 

When M. de Lamartine sees all this, not merely written 
down as in these pages, but actually proved by facts and irre- 
futable testimonies, his loyal soul must revolt and wish to do 
justice to himself by rejecting his former opinions. He will 
understand that if he himself has been called a drinker of 
blood by the party whom he styles bigoted and composed of 
old men, Byron, too, may have been calumniated. Looking, 
then, at the great poet in his proper light, that is, in the pleni- 

C 



50 Lord Byron and M. De Lamartine. 



tude of his rare qualities, and considering him under each of 
the circumstances of his life, M. de Lamartine Avill own that 
he had misunderstood that most admirable of characters, and 
grant that the " satanic laughter " of which he spoke was, on 
the contrary, the smile which was so beautiful that it might 
have lighted up by its magic soft rays the dark regions of 
Satan. His doubts being cleared away, M. de Lamartine will 
end by saying that Byron was an " angel, not a demon." 

Byron's misfortune was to have been born in the England 
of those days. Do you remember his beautiful lines in the 
" Due Foscari ?"— 

" He might have lived, 
So formed for gentle privacj' of life, 
So loving, so beloved ; the native of 
Another land, and who so bless'd and blessing 
As my poor Foscari? Nothing was wanting 
Unto his happiness and mine save not 
To be Venetian." 

In writing these lines Byron must have thought of his own 
fate. He was scarcely British by origin, and very little so by 
his turn of mind, or by his tastes or by the nature of his genius. 
" My ancestors are not Saxon, they are Norman," he said ; 
" and my blood is all meridian." 

If, instead of being born in England then, he had come be- 
fore the world when his star would have been hailed -wnth the 
same love and regard that was granted to Dante in Italy, to 
Chateaubriand and Lamartine in France, or to Goethe in Ger- 
many, who would ever have blamed him for the slight errors 
which fell from his pen in " Don Juan," — a poem written hasti- 
ly and with carelessness, but of which it can be said, as Mon- 
tesquieu said of the prettiest women, " their part has more 
gravity and importance than is generally thought." If the 
sense of the ridiculous is ever stronger among people whose 
appreciation of the beautiful is keenest, who more than Byron 
could have possessed it to a higher degree ? Is it therefore 
to be marvelled at that, in order to make the truth he reveal- 
ed accessible to all, and such whose minds had rusted in ego- 
tism and routine, he should have given to them a new and 
sarcastic form ? 

Had he been born anywhere but in the England of those 
days, he never would have been accused of mocking virtue be- 



n 



Lord Byron and M. De Lamartine. 51 

cause he claimed for it reality of character, and not that super- 
ficial form which he saw existed then in society. He believed 
it right to scorn the appearances of virtue put on only for the 
purpose of reajjing its advantages. No one respected more 
than he did all that was really holy, virtuous, and respectable ; 
but who could blame him for wishing to denounce hypocrisy ? 
As for his supposed skepticism, and his expressions of despair, 
they may be classed with the misgivings of Job, of Pascal, of 
Lamartine, of Chateaubriand, and of other great minds, for 
whom the unknown world is a source of constant anxiety of 
thought, and whose cry of despair is rather a supplication to 
the Almighty that He Avould reveal himself more to their eyes. 
It must be borne in mind that the skepticism which some lines 
in his poems denounce is one of which the desponding nature 
calls more for our sympathy than our denunciations, since " we 
discover in the midst of these doubts," says Moore, " an innate 
piety which might have become tepid but never quite cold." 
His own words should be remembered when he writes, as a 
note to the two first cantos of " Childe Harold," that the spirit 
of the stanzas reflects grief and illness, more than an obsti- 
nate and mocking skepticism ; and so they do. They do not 
embody any conclusions, but are only the expression of a pas- 
sionate appeal to the Almighty to come to the rescue and pro- 
claim the victory of faith. 

Could any thing but a very ordinaiy event be seen in his 
separation from a wife who was in no way suited to him, and 
whose worth can be esteemed by the remark which she address- 
ed to Byron some three weeks after her marriage : " When, 
ray lord, do you intend to give up your habit of versifying ?" 
And, alas ! could he possibly be happy, born as he was in a 
country where party prejudices ran so high ? where his first 
satire had created for him so many enemies? where some of 
his poems had roused political anger against him, and where 
his truth, his honesty, could not patiently bear with the hy- 
pocrisy of those who surrounded him, and where, in fact, he 
had had the misfortune to marry Miss Milbank ? 

The great minds whom God designs to be the apostles of 
truth on earth, make use for that purpose of the most effica- 
cious means at their disposal. The universal genius of By- 
ron allowed of his making use of every means to arrive at his 



52 Lord Byron and M. De Lamartine. 

end. He was able to be at once pathetic, comic, tragical, sa- 
tii'ical, vehement, scoffing, bitter, and pleasant. This universal- 
ity of talents, directed against Englishmen, was injurious to 
his peace of mind. 

When Byron went to Italy his heart was bi'oken down with 
real and not imaginary sorrows. These were not of that kind 
which create perfection, but were the result of an unheard-of 
persecution on account of a family difference in which he was 
much more the victim than the culprit. 

He required to live in a milder climate, and a softer atmos- 
phere to breathe in. He found both at Venice ; and under 
their influence his mind took a new turn, which had remained 
undeveloped while in his own clouded country. 

In the study of Italian literature he met with the Bernesque 
poetry, which is so lightly and elegantly sarcastic. He made 
the acquaintance of Buratti, the clever and charming satirist. 
He began, himself, to perceive the baseness of men, and found 
in an gesthetical mockery of human failings the most copious 
of the poetical currents of his mind. The more his friends 
and his enemies told him of the calumnies which were uttered 
against him, so much the more did Byron's contempt swell into 
disdain; and to this circumstance did "Beppo" and "Don 
Juan " owe their appearance. 

The social condition of his country and the prevalent cant 
opened to him a field for reflection at Venice, where customs 
were so different and manners so tolerant. Seeing new hori- 
zons before him, he was more than ever disgusted at the judg- 
ments of those who calumniated him, and ended by believing 
It to be best to laugh at their silly efforts to ruin him. He 
then wrote " Beppo " and afterward " Don Juan." 

He was mistaken, however, in believing that in England 
this new style of poetry would be liked. His jests and sar- 
casms were not understood by the greater portion of those 
against whom they were levelled. The nature of the Bernese 
poetry being essentially French, England could not, with its 
serious tendencies, like a production in which the moral pur- 
pose was artistically veiled. From that day forward a sever- 
ance took place between Byron and his countrymen. What 
had enchanted the French displeased them, and Byron in vain 
.translated the " Morgante " of Pulci, to show them what a 



LoKD Byron and M. De Lamartine. 53 

priest could say in that style of poetry in a Catholic country. 
In vain did he write to his friends that " Don Juan " will be 
known by-and-by for what it is intended, — a satire on the 
abuses of the present state of society, and not a eulogy of 
vice. It may be now and then voluptuous : I can't help it. 
Ariosto is worse ; Smollett ten times worse ; Fielding no bet- 
ter. No girl will ever be seduced by reading ' Don Juan,' " 
etc. 

But he was blamed just because he jested. To his ultra- 
montane tone they would have preferred him to blaspheme in 
coarse Saxon. 

One of the best of Byron's biographers asserts that he was 
a French mind lost on the borders of the Thames. Lord By- 
ron had every kind of mind, and that is why he was equally 
French. But in addressing his countrymen, as such, he heap- 
ed a mountain of abuse upon his head. 

With the most moral portion of the English public a violent 
satire would have had better chance of success. With the 
higher classes the work was read with avidity and pleasure. 
It was not owned, because there were too many reasons for 
condemning it ; but it found its way imder many a pillow, to 
prove to the countiy how virtue and j)atriotism were endan- 
gered by this production. 

Murray made himself the echo of all this wrath, and Lord 
Byron, not able at times to contain his, wrote to him much to 
the following purpose — 

" I intend to write my best work in Italian, and I am work- 
ing at it. As for the opinion of the English, which you men- 
tion, let them know how much it is worth before they come 
and insult me by their condescension. 

" I have not written for their pleasure ; if they find theirs 
in the perusal of my works, it is because they wish it. I have 
never flattered their opinion or their pride, nor shall I ever do 
so. I have no intention either of writing books for women or 
to ' cUlettar le feraine e hi plese^ I have written merely from 
impulse and from passion, and not for their sweet voices. I 
know what their applause is worth ; few writers have had 
more. They made of me a kind of popular idol without my 
ever wishing, and kicked me down from the pedestal upon 
which their caprice had raised me. But the idol did not break 



54 Lord Byron and M. De Lamartine. 

in the fall, aud now they would raise it again, but they shall 
not." As soon as they saw that Byron was perfectly happy in 
Italy, and that their abuse did him but very little harm, they 
gave full vent to their rage. 

They had shown how little they knew him when they iden- 
tified him with his heroes ; they found that they knew even 
less of him when he appeared to them in the reality of his 
character. Calumny followed upon calumny. Unable to find 
him at fault, they interpreted his words themselves, and gave 
them a different meaning. Every thing was figurative of some 
wickedness, and to the simplest expressions some vile intention 
was attributed. 

They depreciated his works, in which are to be found such 
admirable and varied types of women characters, that they 
even surpass in beauty those of Shakspeare (Angiolina, Myrrha, 
Anna) : they said that Faliero wanted interest, that Sarda- 
napalus was a voluptuary ; that Satan in " Cain " did not speak 
as a theologian (how could he ?), that there were irreverent 
tendencies in his sacred dramas — aud finally that his dec- 
laration — 

"My altars are the mountains and the ocean, 
Earth, air, stars, — all that springs from the great Whole, 
Who hath produced, and will receive the soul," 

was hazardous, and almost that of an atheist. Atheist ! he ! 
who considered atheists fools. 

On leaving Venice for Ravenna,* where he had spent a few 
months, only by way of distraction in the midst of his sor- 

* Gait says, "It was in the course of the passage to the island of Zea, where 
lie was put on shore, that one of the most emphatic incidents of his life occurred ; 
an incident which throws a remarkable jjleam into the springs and intricacies 
of his character, more perhaps than an}' thing wliich has yet been mentioned. 
One day, as he was walking the quarter-deck, he lifted an attaglian (it might be 
one of the midshipmen's weapons), and unsheathing it, said, contemplating the 
blade, ' / should like to know hoio a pn'soii feels after committing murder.^ B}' 
those who have inquiringly noticed the extraordinary cast of his metaphysical 
associations, this dagger scene must be regarded as both impressive and solemn ; 
the wish to know how a man felt after committitig murder does not imply any 
desire to perpetrate the crime. The feeling might be appreciated b}' experienc- 
uig any actual degree of guilt; for it is not the deed, — the sentiment which fol- 
lows it makes the horror. But it is doing injustice to suppose the expression of 
such a wish dictated by desire. Lord BjTon has been heard to express, in the 
eccentricity of conversation, wishes for a more intense knowledge of remorse 
than murder itself could give. There is, however, a wide and wild difference 
between the curiosity that prompts the wish to know the exactitude of any feel- 



Lord Byron and M. De Lamartine. 55 

rows and serious occupations, he was accused of dissolute con- 
duct; and the serious attachment which he had wished to 
avoid, but which had mastered his whole heart, and induced 
him to live an isolated life with the person he loved in a 
town of Romagna, far from all that could flatter his vanity 
and from all intercourse with his countrymen, was brought 
against him to show that he lived the life of an Epicurean, 
and brought misery into the heart of families. 

All this, no doubt, might have again called for his contempt, 
but on his way from Ravenna to Pisa he wrote the outpour- 
ings of his mind in a poem, the last lines of which are : — 

"Oh Fame! if T e'er took delight in thy praises, 
'Tvvas less far the sake of thy high-sounding phrases, 
Than to see the briglit eyes of the dear one discover, 
The thought that I was not unworthy to love her. 

" There chiefly I sought thee, there only I found thee ; 
Her glance was the best of tlie rays that surround thee; 
When it sparkled o'er aught that was bright in mj- story, 
I knew it was love, and I felt it was glory." 

His heart was wounded by the persecutions to which those 
he loved were subjected. His thoughts were for his daughter, 
who was growing uj) in the midst of her father's enemies, and 
for his beloved sister who was praying for him. * He contem- 
plated in the fixture the time when he could show the moral 
and heroic power of his soul. He looked forward to the great 
deeds by which he was going to astonish them, and perhaps call 
for their admiration, instead of his writings, which had never 
reaped for him any thing but pain. 

ing or idea, and the direful passions that instigate to guiltv gratifications." — 
Gait, 152. 

His curiosity was psychological and philosophical, that of a great artist wish- 
ing to explore the heart of man in its darkest depths. 

On the eve of his departure from Rome he assisted at the execution of three 
assassins, remahiing to the end, although this spectacle threw him into a perfect 
fever, causing such thirst and trembling that he could hardly hold up his opera- 
glass. 

At Venice he preferred Madame Benzoni's conversation to that of Madame 
Albrizzi, because she was more thoroughly Venetian, and as such more fitted for 
the study he wished to make of national manners. He used to saj' that every 
thing in the loorld ought to be seen once, and it is to this idea that we must special- 
ly attribute some of the oddities so exaggerated and so much criticised during 
his short stay at Venice, for in reality he had none of these tastes. 

Pairj' says, " Lord Bj'ron had an insatiable curiosity, he v as forever making 
questions and researches. He wished me to relate to him all the most trifling 
incidents of my life in America, Virginia, and Canada." — Parry, 180. 



56 Lord Byron and M. Dk Lamaktine. 

" If I live," he wrote to Moore, " you will see that I shall 
do something better than rhyming." 

Truth however, when told by such men as Byron, and 
however ungraciously received, must guide in the end the 
steps of those who walk in its wake. 

This has been the case with Byron's poetry. Its influence 
over the minds of Englishmen has been very salutaiy and 
great, and is one of the principal causes which brought on a 
reform of the rooted prejudices and opinions of the public in 
England, by the necessity under which it placed them of look- 
ing into the defects of the law and of the constitution, to which 
they had hitherto so crouchingly submitted. Since then the 
fegling of good-will toward other nations has materially in- 
creased in that great country. 

Others have improved the way which Byron opened up 
for reform, and thanks to him England at his death began to 
lose her excessive susceptibility. She became accustomed to 
listen to the truth, and those who now proclaim it are not re- 
quired to be exiled, or to suffer as Byron did up to the time 
of his death. His sufferings, no doubt, paved his way to 
everlasting glory, but his heroic death left him at the mercy 
of the enemies who survived him. 

If ever a premature death was unfortunate, Byron's was ; 
not only for him, because he was on the point of giving to 
the world the proof of those virtues which had been denied 
him, biit also for humanity, by the loss of various treasures 
which will probably never be found again. 

The epoch, however, of faint words and unbecoming si- 
lence has gone by even in England. Already one of the 
greatest men of England has claimed a monument in West- 
minster Abbey, which had been denied to his memory by the 
bigoted rancor of the man who was dean at the time of By- 
ron's death, denied to that poet whom another great English 
statesman has called " a great writer, but a still greater man." 

There remains a still more imperious duty to be fulfilled 
by those who have been able to appreciate his great qualities. 
That duty is to proclaim them and to prevent the further 
spread of falsehood and error as to his real character. 

This is a very long letter, my dear count, but you know 
how Ions: all letters must be which are intended to refute 



Lord Bykon and M. De Lamartine. 57 

opinions and to rectify judgments. M. de Lamartine has the 
excellent habit of listening to your advice, and that is why I 
have had at heart to let you know the truth about Byron. 
The present work will adduce the proofs of the appreciations 
contained in this letter. I know that you do not require 
them, but also that the public does. 

Pray accept, etc. . 

C2 



58 Portrait of Lord Byron. 



CHAPTER II. 

PORTRAIT OF LORD BYRON. 

The following letter was addressed to M. de Lamartine, 
who had asked the author of these pages to give him the 
" portrait physique " of Lord Byron. 

My dear Monsieur de Lamartine, — 

Being on the point of departure, I nevertheless wish to 
send you a few explanations which must serve as my apology. 
You have asked me to draw the portrait of Lord Byron, and 
I have promised you that I would do so. I now see that my 
promise was presumptuous. Every time I have endeavored 
to trace it, I have had to put down my pen, discouraged as I 
was by the fact of my always discovering too many obstacles 
between my reminiscences and the possibility of expressing 
them. My attempts appeared to me at times to be a profa- 
nation by the smallness of their chai-acter ; at others, they 
bore the mark of an extreme enthusiasm, which, however, 
seemed to me very weak in its results and very ridiculous in 
its want of power. Images which are preserved in thought 
to a degree which may almost be considered supernatural, 
are susceptible of too much change during the short transit 
of the mind to the pen. 

The Almighty has created beings of such harmonious and 
ideal beauty that they defy description or analysis. Such a 
one was Lord Byron. His wonderful beauty of expression 
has never been rendered either by the brush of the painter or 
tlie sculptor's chisel. It summed up in one magnificent type 
the highest expression of every possible kind of beauty. If 
his genius and his great heart could have chosen a human 
form by which they could have been well represented, they 
could not have chosen another! Genius shone in his very 
looks. All the effects and emotions of a ecreat soul were 



Portrait of Lord Byron. 59 

therein reflected as well as those of an eminently good and 
generous heart, and indeed contrasts were visible which are 
scarcely ever united in one and the same person. His eyes 
seized and betrayed the sentiments which animated him, with 
a rapidity and transparency such as called forth from Sir 
Walter Scott the remark, that the fine head of his young ri- 
val " was like unto a beautiful alabaster vase lightened up by 
an interior lamp." To see him, was to understand thoroughly 
liow really false were the calumnies spread about as to his 
character. The mass, by their obstinacy in identifying him 
Avith the imaginary types of his poems, and in judging him 
by a few eccentricities of early youth, as well as by various 
bold thoughts and expressions, had represented to themselves 
a factitious Byron, totally at variance with the real man. 
Calumnies, which unfortunately he passed over in disdainful 
silence, have circulated as acknowledged facts. Time has de- 
stroyed many, but it would not be correct to say that they 
have all entirely been destroyed. Lord Byron was silent, 
because he depended upon time to silence his calumniators. 
All those who saw him must have experienced the charm 
which surrounded him as a kind of sympathetic atmosphere, 
gaining all hearts to him. What can be said to those who 
never saw him ? Tell them to look at the pictures of him 
which were painted by Saunders, by Phillips, by Holmes, or 
by Westall ? All these, although the works of great artists, 
are full of f^xults. Saunders's picture represents him with 
thick lips, whereas his lips were harmoniously perfect: 
Holmes almost gives him a large instead of his well-propor- 
tioned and elegant head ! In Pliillips's picture the expression 
is one of haughtiness and affected dignity, never once visible 
to those who ever saw him.* 

" These portraits," says Dallas, " will certainly present to 
the stranger and to posterity that which it is possible for the 

* Among the bad portraits of Lord Byron spread over the world, there is one 
that surpasses all others in ugliness, which is often put up for sale, and which a 
mercantile spirit wishes to pass off for a good likeness; it was done by an Amer- 
ican, Mr. West, — an excellent man, but a very bad painter. This portrait, which 
America requested to have taken, and which Lord Byron consented to sit for, 
was begun at Montenero, near Leghorn ; but Lord Byron, being obliged to leave 
^lontenfro suddenly, could on]»give Mr. West two or three sittings. It was 
then finished from memory, and, far from lieing at all like Lord Byron, is a 
frightful caricature, which his family or friends ought to destroy. 



60 Portrait of Lord Byron. 

brush to reproduce so far as the features are concerned, but 
the charm of speech and the grace of movement must be left 
to the imagination of those who have had no opportunity to 
observe them. No brush can paint these." 

The picture of Byron by Westall is superior to the others, 
but does not come up to the original. As for the copies and 
engravings which have been taken from these pictures, and 
circulated, they are all exaggerated, and deserve the appella- 
tion of caricatures. 

Can his portrait be found in the descriptions given by his 
biographers ? But biographers seek far more to amuse and 
astonish, in order that their writings may be read, than to 
adhere to the simple truth. 

It can not be denied, however, that in the portraits which 
several, such as Moore, Dallas, Sir Walter Scott, Disraeli in 
London, the Countess Albrizzi at Venice, Beyle (Stendhal) at 
Milan, Lady Blessington and Mrs. Shelley in Italy, have drawn 
of* Lord Byron there is much truth, accompanied by certain 
qualifications which it is well to explain. I shall therefore 
give in their own words (preferring them to my own impres- 
sions) the unanimous testimony of those who saw him, be 
they friends or beings for whom he was indifferent. Here 
are Moore's words : — " Of his face, the beauty may be pro- 
nounced to have been of the highest order, as combining at 
once regularity of features with the most varied and interest- 
ing expression. 

" His eyes, though of a light gray, were capable of all ex- 
tremes of expression, from the most joyous hilarity to the 
deepest sadness, from the very sunshine of benevolence to the 
most concentrated scorn or rage. But it was in the mouth 
and chin that the great beauty as well as expression of his 
fine countenance lay. 

. "His head was remarkably small, so much so as to be 
rather out of proportion with his face. The forehead, though 
a little too narrow, was high, and appeared more so from his 
havmg his hair (to preserve it, as he said) shaved over the 
temples. Still the glossy dark-brown curls, clustering over 
his head, gave the finisli to its beauty. When to this is added 
that his nose, though handsomely wM rather thickly shaped, 
that his teeth were white and regular, and his complexion 



Portrait of Lord Byron. 61 

colorless, as good an idea perhaps as it is in the power of 
mere words to convey may be conceived of his features. 

" In height he was, as he himself has informed us, five feet 
eight inches and a half, and to the length of his hmhs he at- 
tributed his being such a good swimmer. His hands were 
very white, and, according to his own notions of the size of 
hands as indicating birth, aristocratically small." 

" "What I chiefly remember to have remarked," adds Moore, 
" when I was first introduced to him, was the gentleness of his 
voice and manners, the nobleness of his air, his beauty, and 
his marked kindness to myself. Being in mourning for his 
mother, the color as well of his dress, as of his glossy, curling 
and picturesque hair, gave more effect to the pure, spiritual 
paleness of his features, in the expression of which, when he 
spoke, there was a perpetual play of lively thought, though 
melancholy was their habitual character when in repose." 

When Moore saw him again at Venice, some eight years 
after the first impressions which Byron's beauty had produced 
upon him in London (1812), he noted a change in the charac- 
ter of that beauty. 

" He had grown fatter both in person and face, and the lat- 
ter had most suffered by the change — having lost by the en- 
largement of the features some of that refined and spiritual- 
ized look that had in other times distinguished it 

He was still, however, eminently handsome, and in exchange 
for whatever his features might have lost of their high ro- 
mantic character, they had become more fitted for the expi'es- 
sion of that arch, waggish wisdom, that epicurean play of hu- 
mor, which he had shown to be equally inherent in his vari- 
ous and prodigally gifted nature; while by the somewhat in- 
creased roundness of the contours the resemblance of his fine- 
ly-formed mouth and chin to those of the Belvedere Apollo 
had become still more sti'iking."* 

Here are now the words of Lady B , who saw him a 

few weeks only before his last departure for Greece. This 
lady had conceived a totally different idea of Byron. Accord- 
ing to her, Byron would have appeared affected, triste, in ac- 
cordance with certain portraits and certain types in his poems. 

* Moore, vol. ii. p. 248. 



62 Portrait of Lord Byron. 

But, if in order not to cause any jealousy among the living, 
she dared not reveal all her admiration, she at least suffered it 
to appear from time to time. 

" There are moments," she says, " when Lord Byron's face 
is shadowed over with the pale cast of thought, and then his 
head might serve as a model for a sculptor or a painter to rep- 
resent the ideal of poesy. His head is particularly well form- 
ed : his forehead is high, and powerfully indicative of his in- 
tellect : his eyes are full of expression : his nose is beautiful in 
profile, though a little thickly shaped. His eyebrows are per- 
fectly drawn, but his mouth is perfection. Many pictui-es 
have been painted of him, but the excessive beauty of his lips 
escaped every painter and sculptor. In their ceaseless play 
they represented every motion, whether pale with anger, curl- 
ed in disdain, smiling in triumph, or dimpled with archness 
and love." 

This portrait can not be suspected of partiality ; for, wheth- 
er justly or not, she did not enjoy Lord Byron's sympathy, 
and knew it ; she had also to forgive liim various 1 i tie cii*- 
cumstances which had wounded her " amour propre," and. was 
obliged to measure her praise in order not to create any jeal- 
ousy with certain people who surrounded him and who had 
some pretension to beauty. 

Here is the portrait of him which another lady (the Com- 
tesse Albrizzi of Venice) has drawn, notwithstanding her 
wounded prjde at the refusal of Lord Byron to allow her to 
write a portrait of him and to continue her visits to him at 
Venice : — 

" What serenity on his forehead ! What beautiful auburn, 
silken, brilliant, and naturally cui'led hair ! What variety of 
expression in his sky-blue eyes ! His teeth were like pearls, 
his cheeks had the delicate tint of a pale rose ; his neck, which 
was always bare, was of the purest white. His hands were 
real works of art. His whole frame was faultless, and many 
found rather a particular grace of manner than a fault in the 
slight undulation of his person on entering a room. This 
l»euding of the body was, however, so slight that the cause of 
it was hardly ever inquired into." 

As I have mentioned the deformity of his foot, even before 
quoting other testimonies to his beauty, I shall tarry a while 



Portrait oy Lord Byron. 63 

and speak of this defect, the only one in so pre-eminently fa- 
vored a being. What was this defect, since all becomes il- 
lustrious in an illustrious man ? Was it visible ? Was it 
true that Lord Byron felt this imperfection so keenly ? Here 
is the truth. 

No defect existed in the formation of his limbs ; his slight 
infirmity was nothing but the result of weakness of one of 
his ankles. 

His habit of ever being on horseback had brought on the 
emaciation of his legs, as evinced by the post-mortem exami- 
nation ; besides which, the best. proof of this has been lately 
given in an English newspaper much to the following effect : — 

" Mrs. Wildmau (the widow of the colonel who had bought 
Newstead) has lately given to the Naturalist Society of Not- 
tingham several objects which had belonged to Lord Byron, 
and among others his boot and shoe trees. These trees are 
about nine inches long, narrow, and generally of a symmet- 
rical form. They were accompanied by the following state- 
ment of Mr. Swift, bootmaker, who worked for his lordship 
from 1805 to 1807. Swift is still alive, and continues to re- 
side at Southwell. His testimony as to the genuineness of 
the trees, and to the nature of Lord Byron's deformity, of 
which so many contradictory assertions have circulated, is as 
follows : — 

" ' William Swift, bootmaker at Southwell, Nottingham- 
shire, having had the honor of working for Lord Byron when 
residing at Southwell from 1805 to 1807, asserts that these 
were the trees upon which his lordship's boots and shoes were 
made, and that the last pair delivered was on the 10th of 
May, 1807. He, moreover, affirms that his lordship had not a 
club foot, as has been said, but that both his feet were equal- 
ly well formed, one, however, being an inch and a half shorter 
than the other. • The defect was not in the foot but in the an- 
kle, which, being weak, caused the foot to turn out too much. 
To remedy this his lordship wore a very light and thin boot, 
which was tightly laced just under the sole, and, when a boy, 
he was made to wear a piece of iron with a joint at the ankle, 
which passed behind the leg and was tied behind the shoe. 
The calf of this leg was weaker than the other, and it was the 
left leg. (Signed) William Swift.' " 



64: Portrait of Lord Byron. 

This, then, is the extent of the defect of which so much 
has been said, and which has been called a deformity. As to 
its being visible, all those who knew him assert that it was so 
little evident that it was even impossible to discover in which 
of the legs or feet the fault existed. To the testimonies al- 
ready quoted I must add another : — 

" His defect," says Mr. Gait, " was scarcely visible. He 
had a way of walking which made it appear almost imper- 
ceptible, and indeed entirely so. I spent several days on 
board a ship with him without discovering this defect ; and, 
in truth, so little perceptible was it that a doubt always ex- 
isted in my mind whether it might not be the effect of a tem- 
porary accident rather than a natural defect." 

All those who knew him being therefore agreed in this opin- 
ion, that of people who were not acquainted with him is of no 
value. But if, in the material appreciation of a defect, they 
have not been able to err, several have erred in their moral ap- 
preciation of the fact by pretending that Lord Byron, for im- 
aginary reasons, was exceedingly sensible of this defect. This 
excessive sensibility was a pure invention on the part of his 
biograjihers. When he did experience it (which was never 
but to a very moderate extent), it was only because, physical- 
ly speaking, he suffered from it. Under the sole of the weak 
foot he at times experienced a painful sensation, especially 
after long walks. 

" Once, at Genoa," says Mme. G., " he walked down the 
hill of Albaro to the seaside with me, by a rugged and rough 
path. When we had reached the shore he was very well and 
lively. But it was an exceedingly hot day, and the return 
home fatigued him greatly. When home I told him I thought 
he looked ill. ' Yes,' said he, ' I suffer greatly from my foot ; 
it can hardly be conceived how much I suffer at times from 
that pain,' and he continued to speak to me about this defect 
with great simplicity and indifference." 

He used often even to laugh at it, so superior was he to 
that weakness. "Beware," said Count Gamba to him on 
one occasion while riding with him, and on reaching some 
dangerous spot, " beware of falling and breaking your neck." 
" I should decidedly not like it," said Byron ; " but if this leg 
of which I don't make much use were to break, it would be 



Portrait of Lord Byron. 65 

the same to me, and perhaps then I should be able to procure 
myself a more useful one." 

The sensitiveness, therefore, which he was said to expe- 
rience, and which would have been childish in him, was in 
reality only the occasional experience of a physical pain which 
did not, however, affect his strength, nor the grace of his 
movements, in all those physical exercises to which he was so 
much attached. It in no wise altered his good looks, and, as 
a proof of this, I shall again bring testimonies, giving first 
that of M. N., who was at Constantinople when Byron arrived 
there for the first time, and who thus describes him in a re- 
view which he wrote of him after Byron's death : — 

" A stranger then entered the bazar. He wore a scarlet 
cloak, richly embroidered with gold in the style of an English 
aid-de-camp's dress uniform. He was attended by a janissa- 
ry attached to the English Embassy and by a cicerone : he 
appeared to be about twenty-two. His features were of so 
exquisite a delicacy, that one might almost have 'given him a 
feminine appearance, but for the manly expression of his fine 
blue eyes. On entering the inner shop he took off his hat, 
and showed a head of curly auburn hair, which improved in 
no small degree the uncommon beauty of his face. The im- 
pression his whole appearance made upon my mind, was such 
that it has ever remained most deeply engraven on it ; and al- 
though fifteen years have since gone by, the lapse of time has 
not in the least impaired the freshness of the recollection," 
Then, speaking of his manner, he goes on to say : " There 
was so iri'esistible an attraction in his manner, that only those 
who have been so fortunate as to be admitted to his intimacy 
can have felt its power." 

Moore once asked Lady Holland whether she believed that 
Lady Byron had ever really loved Lord Byron. " Could it 
be otherwise?" I'eplied Lady Holland. "Was it possible 
not to love so lovable a creature ? I see him there now, sur- 
rounded as it were by that great light : oh, how handsome he 
was !" 

One of the most difficult things to define was the color of 
his eyes. It wa^ a mixture of blue, gray, and violet, and these 
various colors were each uppermost according to the thought 
which occupied his mind or his heart. " Tell me, dear," said 



G6 Portrait of Lord Byron. 

the little Eliza to her sister, whose enthusiasm for Byrou she 
shared, " tell me what is the color of his eyes ?" " I can not 
say ; I believe them to be dark," answered Miss Eliza, " but 
all I know is that they have quite a supernatural splendor." 
And one day, having looked at them with greater attention in 
order to ascertain their color, she said, " They are the finest 
eyes in the world, but not dark, as I had at first believed. 
Their hue is that of the eyes of Mary Stuart, and his long, 
black eye-lashes make them appear dark. Never did I before, 
nor ever again shall I, see such eyes ! As for his hands, they 
are the most beautiful hands, for a man, I ever saw. His 
voice is a sweet melody."* 

Sir Walter Scott was enchanted when he could dilate on 
the extraordinary beauty of Byron. One day, at Mr. Home 
Drummond's, he exclaimed : — "As for poets, I have seen the 
best that this country has produced, and although Burns had 
the finest eyes that can be imagined, I never thought that any 
man except Byron could give an artist the exact idea of a poet. 
His portraits do not do him the least justice; the varnish is 
there, but the ray of sunshine is wanting to light them up. 
The beauty of Byron," he added " is one which makes one 
dream." 

Colonel Wildman, his colleague at Harrow, and his friend, 
was always wont to say, " Lord Byron is the only man among 
all those I have seen, who may be called, without restriction, 
a really handsome man." 

Disraeli, in his novel entitled " Venetia," speaks thus of 
the beauty of Hubert (who is Lord Byron) when Venetia finds 
his portrait : — 

" That being of supernatural beauty is her father. Young 
as he w^as, command and genius, the pride of noble passions, 
all the glory of a creative mind, seemed stamped upon his 
brow. With all his marvellous beauty he seemed a being born 
for greatness. ... Its reality exceeded the wildest dreams of 
her romance, her brightest visions of grace and loveUness and 
genius seemed personified in this form. He was a man in 
the very spring of sunny youth and of radiant beauty. He 
was above the middle height, yet mth a form that disi^layed 

* Miss E. Smith. 



Portrait of Lord Byron. * 67 

exquisite grace. . . It was a countenanee of singular loveli- 
ness and power. The lips and the moulding of the chin re- 
sembled the eager and impassioned tenderness of the shape 
of Antinous ; but instead of the effeminate sullenuess of the 
eye, and the narrow smoothness of the forehead, shone an ex- 
pression of profound and piercing thought. On each side of 
the clear and open brow descended, even to the shoulders, the 
clustering locks of golden hair ; while the eyes large and yet 
deep, beamed with a spii'itual energy, and shone like two wells 
of crystalline water that reflect the all-beholding heavens." 

M. Beyle (Stendhal) writes to Mr. Swanton Belloc : — " It 
was in the autumn of the year 1816 that I met Lord Byron at 
the theatre of the Scala, at Milan, in the box of the Bremen 
Minister. I was struck with Lord Byron's eyes at the time 
when he was listening to a sestetto in Mayer's opera of " Ele- 
na." I never in my life saw any thing more beautiful or 
more expressive. Even now, when J think of the expression 
which a great painter should give to genius, I always have 
before me that magnificent head. I had a moment of enthu- 
siasm." And further, he adds that one day he saw him listen- 
ing to Monti while the latter was singing his first couplet in 
the " Mascheroniana." " I shall never forget," said he, " the 
divine expression of his look ; it was the serene look of genius 
and power." •* 

I might multiply these testimonies of people who have 
seen him, and fill many pages ; their particular character is 
their uniform resemblance. This proves the soundness of the 
ground on which their truth is based. I will add one more 
testimony to the others, that of Mrs. Shelley, which is even 
nearer the truth, and condenses all the others : — " Lord By- 
ron," said this distinguished woman, " was the first genius of 
his age and the handsomest of men." 

In all these portraits there is much truth, but they are not 
sufliciently complete to give those who never saw him any but 
a faint idea of his smile, or of his mouth, which seemed to be 
not suited to material purposes, and to be purely intellectual 
and divine ; of his eyes, M'hich changed from one color to an- 
other according to the various emotions of his soul, but the 
habitual expression of which was that of an infinite and in- 
tense softness ; of his sublime and noble brow ; of his melo- 



68 Portrait of Lord Byron. 

dious voice, which attracted and captivated ; and of that kind 
of supernatural light which seemed to surround him like a 
halo. 

This inability on the part of artists and biographers to 
render exactly Byron's features and looks, is not to be won- 
dered at, for although perfectly regular, his features derived 
their principal beauty from the life which his soul instilled 
into them. The emotions of his heart, the changes of his 
thoughts, appeared so variously upon his countenance, and 
gave the latter so changeable a cast, that it sufficed not for 
the artist who had to portray him, to gaze at and study him, 
as one generally does "less gifted or elevated organizations. 
The reality was more likely to be well interpreted when it 
stood a prey to the various emotions of the soul ; in his leis- 
ure hours, in the full enjoyment of life and love, he was satis- 
fied with the knowledge that he was young, handsome, beloved, 
and admii-ed. Then it wj^p that his beauty became, as it were, 
radiant and brilliant like a ray of sunshine. 

The time to see him was when, under the influence of gen- 
ius, his soul was tormented with the desire of pouring out 
the numberless ideas and thoughts which flooded his mind : 
at such moments one scarcely dared approach him, awed, as it 
were, by the feeling of one's own nothingness in comparison 
with his greatness. A^in, the time to see him was when, 
coming doAvn from the high regions to which a moment be- 
fore he had soared, he became once more the simple child 
adorned with goodness and every grace ; taking an interest 
in all things, as if he were really a child. It was impossible 
then to refrain from the contemplation of this placid beauty, 
which, without taking away in the least from the admiration 
which it inspired, drew one toward him, and made him more 
accessible to one, and more familiar by lessening a little the 
distance which separated one from him. But, above all, he 
should have been seen during the last days of his stay in It- 
aly, when his soul had to sustain the most cruel blows ; when 
heroism got the better of his affections, of his worldly inter- 
ests, and even of his love of ease and tranquillity ; when his 
health, already shaken, appeared to fail him each day more 
and more, to the loss of his intellectual powers. Had one seen 
him then as we saw him, it would scarcely have been possible 



Portrait of Lord Byron. 69 

to paint him as he looked. Does not genius require genius 
to be its interpreter ? Thorwaldsen alone has, in his marble 
bust of hira, been able to blend the regular beauty of his feat- 
ures with the sublime expression of his countenance. Had 
the reader seen him, he would have exclaimed with Sir Wal- 
ter Scott, " that no picture is like him." 

Not only would he have observed in his handsome face the 
denial of all the absurd statements which had been made about 
him, but he would have noticed a soul greater even than the 
mind, and superior to the acts which he performed on this 
earth ; he would have read in unmistakable characters, not 
only what he was, — a good man, — but the promise of a mor- 
al and intellectual perfection ever increasing. If this pro- 
gressive march toward perfection was at one time arrested 
by the trials of his life, and by the consequences of undeserved 
sorrow, it was well proved by his whole conduct toward the 
end of his life, and in the last poems which he wrote. His 
poems from year to year assumed a more perfect beauty, and 
increased constantly, not only in the splendor of their concep- 
tion, but also in the force of their expressions, and their mor- 
al tendency, visible especially in his dramas. In them will be 
found types surpassing in purity, in delicacy, in grandeur, in 
heroism, without ever being untrue to nature, all that ever was 
conceived by the best poets of England. Shakspeare, in all 
his master creations, has not conceived a more noble soul than 
that of Angiolina, or a more tender one than Marina's or even 
one more heroic than Myrrha's. As his genius became devel- 
oped, his soul became purified and more perfect. But the Al- 
mighty, who does not allow perfection to be of this world, did 
not permit him to remain on earth, when once he had reached 
that point. He allowed him, however,— and this perhaps as 
a compensation for all the injuries which he had suffered, — 
to die in the prime of life a death worthy of him ; the death 
of a virtuous man, of a hero, of a philosopher. 

Excuse this long letter, for if I have ventured to speak to 
you at such leogth of the moral, and — may I say the word ? — 
" physical" beauty of the illustrious Englishman, it is because 
one genius can appreciate another, and that, in speaking of so 
great a man as Lord Byron, there is no fear of tiring the lis- 
teners. 



70 French Portrait 



CHAPTER III. 

FRENCH PORTKAIT. 

" I see that the greater part of the men of my time endeavor to blemish the 
glory of the generous and fine actions of olden days by giving to them some vile 
interpretation, or bj^ finding some vain cause or occasion which produced them— 
verv clever, indeed ! I shall use a similar license, and take the same trouble to 
endeavor to raise these great names." — Mont.ugne, chap. "Glory." 

The portrait of Lord Byron, in a moral point of view, is 
still to be drawn. Many causes have conspired to make the 
task difficult, and the portrait unlike. Physically speaking, 
on account of his matchless beauty — mentally, owing to his 
genius — and morally, owing to the rare qualities of his soul, 
Lord Byron was certainly a phenomenon. The world agrees 
in this opinion ; but is not yet agreed upon the nature and 
moral value of the phenomenon. But as all phenomena have, 
besides a primary and extraordinary cause, some secondary 
and accidental causes, which it is necessary to examine in or- 
der that they may be understood ; so, to explain Byron's na- 
ture, we must not neglect to observe the causes which have con- 
tributed chiefly to the formation of his individuality. 

His biographers have rather considered the results than 
the causes. 

Even Moore, the best among them, if not, indeed, the only 
one who can claim the title of biograplier, grants that the na- 
ture of Lord Byron and its operations were inexplicable, but 
does not give himself the trouble to understand them. 

Here are his own words : — " So various indeed, and con- 
tradictory were his attributes, both moral and intellectual, 
that he may be pronounced to have been not one, but many : 
nor would it be any great exaggeration of the truth to say, 
that out of the mere partition of the properties of his single 
mind, a plurality of characters, all different and all vigorous, 
might have been furnished. It was this multiform aspect ex- 
hibited by him that led the world, during his short, wondi'ous 



* Of Lord Byron, 71 

career, to compare him with the medley host of personages, al- 
most all differing from each other, which he plaj^ully enu- 
merates in one of his journals. 

"The object of so many contradictory comparisons must 
probably be like something different from them all ; but what 
that is, is more than I know, or any body else." 

But, while merely explaining the extraordinary richness of 
this nature by the analysis of its results, by his changeable 
character, by the frankness which ever made his heart speak 
that which it felt, by his excessive sensitiveness, which made 
him the slave of momentary impressions, by his almost child- 
like delight and astonishment at things, Moore does not arrive 
at the true causes of the phenomenon. He registers, it is 
true, certain effects which become causes when they draw 
upon the head of Lord Byron certain false judgments, and 
open the door to every calumny. 

Without adopting the system of the influence of races on 
mankind — which, if pushed to its extreme consequences, must 
lead to the disastrous and deplorable doctrine of fatalism, and 
would make of man a mere machine — it is, however, imjiossi- 
ble to deny that races and their amalgamation do exercise a 
great influence over our species. 

It is to this very influence of race, which was so evident in 
Lord Byron, that we attribute, in a measure, the exceptional 
nature of Ahe great English poet. 

As the reader knows, Lord Byron was descended, by his 
father, from the noble race of the Birons of France. His an- 
cestors accompanied William the Conqueror to England, aided 
him in the conquest of that country, and distinguished them- 
selves in the various fields of battle which ultimately led to 
the total subjugation of the island. 

In his family, the sympathies of the original race always 
•remained strong. 

His father, a youthful and brilliant oflicer, was never happy 
except in France. He was very intimate with the Marechal 
de Biron, who looked upon him as a connection. He even 
settled in Paris with his first wife, the Marchioness of Car- 
marthen. Soon after his second marriage, he brought his 
wife over to France, and it was in France that she conceived 
the future poet. When obliged to return to England to be 



72 Fkench Portrait • 

confined, she was so far advanced in pregnancy that she could 
not reach London in time, but gave birth to Lord Byron at 
Dover. It was in France that Byron's father died at thirty- 
five years of age. Through his mother — a Scotch lady con- 
nected with the royal house of Stuart — he had Scotch blood in 
his veins. 

The powerful influence exercised by the Norman Conquest, 
in the modification of all the old habits of Great Britain, and 
in making the English that which they now are, has descend- 
ed as an heirlooTn to some old aristocratic families of the king- 
dom, where it discovers itself at different times in different 
individuals. Nowhere, perhaps, did this influence show itself 
more clearly than in the person of Lord Byron. 

His duplicate or triplicate origin was already visible in the 
cast of his features. Without any analogy to the type of 
beauty belonging to the men of his coimtry (a beauty seldom 
found apart from a kind of cold reserve). Lord Byron's beau- 
ty appeared to unite the energy of the western with the splen- 
dor and the mildness of the southern climes. 

The influence of this mixture of races was equally visible 
in his moral and intellectual character. 

He belonged to the Gallic race (modified by the Latin and 
Celtic elements) by his vivacity and mobility of character, as 
well as by his wit and his keen appreciation of the ridiculous, 
by those smiles and sarcasms which hide or discover a pro- 
found philosophy, by his perception of humor without malice, 
by all those amiable qualities which in the daily intercourse 
of life made of him a being of such irresistible attraction. 
He belonged to that race likewise by his great sensitiveness, 
by his expansive good-nature, by his politeness, by his tracta- 
bleness, by his universal character which rendered every spe- 
cies of success easy to him ; by his great generosity, by his 
love of glory, by his passion for honor, his intuitive perception 
of great deeds, by a courage which might have appeared 
rash, had it not been heroic, and which, in presence of the 
greatest perils and even of death, ever preserved for him that 
serenity of mind which allowed him to laugh, even at such 
times ; by his energy, and also by his numerous mental and 
bodily requirements ; and by his defects, — which were, a slight 
tendency to indiscretion, a want of prudence injurious to his 



Of Lord Byron. 73 

interests, impatience, and a kind of intermittent and apparent 
fickleness. 

He belonged to the western race by his vast intellect, by 
his practical common -sense, Avhich formed the basis of his in- 
tellect, and which never allowed him to divorce sublime con- 
ceptions from sound sense and good reason, — two qualities, 
in fact, which so governed his imagination as to make people 
say he had not any ; by the depth of his feehngs, the extent 
of his learning, his passion for independence, his contempt of 
death, his thirst for the infinite, and by that kind of mebir- 
choly which seemed to follow him into the midst of every 
pleasure. All these various elements, which belonged sepa- 
rately to individuals in France, in England, and in various 
countries, being united in Lord Byron, produced a kind of 
anomaly which startled systematic critics, and even honest bi- 
ographers. The apparent contradiction of all these qualities 
caused his critics to lose their psychological compass in their 
estimate of his charming nature, and justice, together with 
truth, suffered by the result. Thus a portrait, drawn over 
and over again, still remains to be painted. 

The most imaginary portrait, however, of Lord Byron, and 
certainly the least like him, is that which has general curren- 
cy in France : not only has that portrait not been drawn from 
nature, not only is it a caricature, but it is also a calumny. 
Those who drew it took romance for history. They charged 
or exaggerated incidents in his life and peculiarities of his 
character ; thus the harmony of the tout ensemble was lost. 
Ugliness and eccentricity, which amuse, succeeded beauty and 
truth, which are sometimes wearisome. 

Those who knew and loved Lord Byron even more as a 
man than a genius (and, after all, these are those who knew 
him personally) suffer by this injustice done to him, and feel 
the absurdity of making so j^rivileged a being act so whimsi- 
cal a part, and one so contrary to his nature as well as to the 
reality of his life. 

If this imaginary portrait, however, were more like those 
which his best biographers have drawn of him, justice to 
his memory would become so difiicult a task as to be almost 
impossible. Happily it is not so ; and those who would 
conscientiously consult Moore, Parrv, and Ganiba, must at 

D 



74 French Portrait 

least give up the idea that this admirable genius was the ec- 
centric and unamiable being he has been represented. To 
reach this point would, perhaps, require a greater respect for 
truth. 

Even in France there are many superior persons who, struck 
by the force of facts, have at tunes endeavored to seize certain 
features which might lead to the discovery of truth, and have 
attempted to show that Lord Byron's noble character and 
beauty of soul, as well as his genius, did honor to humanity. 
But their efforts have been vain in presence of the absurd and 
contradictory creation of fancy which has been styled " Lord 
Byron," and which with few modifications, continues to be 
called so to this day. 

How has this occurred ? what gave rise to it ? ignorance, 
or carelessness ? Both causes in France, added to revenge in 
England, which found its expression in cant, — a species of 
scourge which is becoming quite the fashion. 

The first of these French biographers (I mean of those who 
have written upon and wished to characterize Lord Byron), 
without knowing the man they were writing about, set to 
work with a ready-made Byron. This, no doubt, they found 
to be an easier method to follow, and one of which the results 
must prove at least original. . But where had they found, and 
from whose hands did they receive this ready-made poet, 
whose features they reproduced and offered to the world? 
Probably from a few lines, not without merit, of Lamartine, 
who by the aid of his rich imagination had identified Byron 
with the types which he had conceived for his Oriental poems, 
mixing up the whole with a hea^p of calumnies which had just 
been circulated about him. 

Perhaps also from certain critics who believed in the state- 
ments of various calumniators, and who themselves had proba- 
bly not had any better authority than a few articles in badly 
informed papers, or in newspapers politically opposed to Lord 
Byron. We all know, by Avhat we see daily in France, how 
little Ave can trust the moderation of these, and the justice 
they render to their adversaries ; what must it not have been 
in England at that time, when passions ran so high ? — Per- 
haps also from the jealousy of dethroned rivals ! — the echoes, 
perhajjs, of the revenge of a woman equally distinguished by 



Of Loud Byron. 75 

her rank and by her talent, but whose passion approached the 
boundaries of madness, or of the implacable hatred of a few 
fanatics who, substituting in the most shameless manner their 
worldly and sectarian interests for the Gospel, denounced him 
as an atheist because he himself had proclaimed them hypo- 
crites. Finally, perhaps, from a host of absurd rumors, equal- 
ly odious and vague, caused by his separation from his wife, 
and by the articles published in newspapers printed at Venice 
and at Milan. 

For Byron s noble, simple, and sublime person was there- 
fore substituted an imaginary being, formed out of these preju- 
dices and these contradictory elements, too outrageous even 
to be believed, and by dint of sheer malice. 

Thus enveloped in a dense atmosphere, which became an 
obstacle to the disclosui-e of truth as the clouds are to the rays 
of the sun, his image only appeared in fantastical outlines 
borrowed from " Conrad the Corsair," or " Childe Harold," 
or " Lara," or " Manfred," or indeed " Don Juan." Analogies 
were sought which do not exist, and to the poet were attrib- 
uted the sentiments, and even the acts, of these imaginary 
beings, albeit without any of the great qualities which con- 
stituted his great and noble soul, and which he has not impart- 
ed to any of his poetical creati(jDS. 

Upon him were heaped every possible and most contradic- 
tory accusation — of skepticism and pantheism, of deism and 
atheism, of superstition and enthusiasm, of irony and passion, 
of sensuality and ideality, of generosity and avarice. These 
went to form his portrait, presenting every contrast and every 
antagonism, which God Himself, the Father and Creator of 
all things, but also the Author of all harmony, could not have 
assembled in one and the same being unless He made of him 
a species of new Frankenstein, incapable of treading the or- 
dinary paths of physical, moral, or intellectual, nay, of the 
most ordinary existence. 

After thus producing such an eccentric character, — the 
more extraordinary that they entirely forgot to consult the 
true and most simple history of his life, where if some of the 
ordinary excusable faults of youth are to be found, " some 
remarkable qualities, however, must be noticed," — these won- 
derful biographers exclaim, astonished as it were at their owji 



76 French Portrait 

conclusions : — " This is indeed a most singular, extraordinary, 
and not-to-be-defined being !" 

I should think so : it is their own work, not the. noble, amia- 
ble, and sublime mind, the work of God, and which he always 
exhibited in himself, 

" Per far di colass^ fede fra noi." — Petearch. 

Happily, if to paint the portrait of Byron has become im- 
possible, now that 

"Poca terra e rimasto il suo belviso," 

it is easy to describe his moral character. His invisible form 
is, it is true, above, but a conscientious examination of his 
whole life will give us an idea of it. He knew this so well 
himself, that a few days before his death he begged, as a fa- 
vor, of his friend Lord Harrington, then Colonel Stanhope, at 
Missolonghi, to judge him only by his deeds. " Judge me by 
my deeds." 

All bombastic expressions, all systematic views should be 
discarded, and attention paid only to facts, in order to discov- 
er the fine intellectual figure of Lord Byron so completely lost 
sight of by his detractors. 

Since the imaginary creations of his pen in moments of ex- 
alted passion should not betaken as the real manifestation of 
his character, the latter is to be found in his own deeds, and 
in the testimony of those who knew him personally. Herein 
shall we seek truth by which we are to deal with the fanciful 
statements Avhich have too long been received as facts. Let 
us consider the opinions of those who by their authority have 
a right to portray him, while we study the various causes 
which have contributed to lead the public into errors which 
time has nearly consecrated, but which shall be corrected in 
France, and indeed in every country where passion and ani- 
mosity have no interest in maintaining them. 

" Public opinion," says M. Cousin, " has its errors, but these 
can not be of long duration." They lasted a long time, how- 
ever, as regards Lord Byron ; but, thanks to God, they will 
not be eternal. He depended upon this himself, for he once 
at Ravenna wrote these prophetic words in a memorandum : — 

" Never mind the wicked, who have ever persecuted me 



Of Lord Byron. 77 

with the help of Lady Byron : triumphant justice will be done 
to me when the hand which writes this is as cold as the hearts 
that have wounded me." 

In England, Lord Byron ti'iumphed over many jealous en- 
emies whom his first satire earned for him, no less than the 
rapid and wonderful rise of his genius, which, instead of ap- 
pearing by degrees, burst forth at once, as it were, and tower- 
ing over many established reputations. The prestige which 
he acquired was such that every obstacle was surmounted, and 
in one day he saw himself raised against his will, and without 
his having ever sought -the honor, to the highest pinnacle of 
fashion and literary fame. 

In a country where success is all, his enemies, and those 
who were jealous of his name, were obliged to fall back : but 
they did not give up their weapons nor their spite. One curi- 
ous element was introduced in the national veneration for the 
poet. It was agreed that never had such an accumulation of 
various gifts been heaped upon the head of one man : he was 
to be revered and honored, but on one condition. He was to 
be a mysterious being whose genius should not transgress the 
boundaries of the East ; who was to allow himself to be iden- 
tified with the imaginary beings of his own fancy, however 
disagreeable, nay, even criminal they might be in reality. 
True, his personal conduct (at twenty-foiir) was to be above 
all human weakness ; if not, he was to be treated, as certain 
superstitious votaries 4reat their idols if they do not obtain 
at once the miracles they ask for. His secret enemies perfid- 
iously made use of these stupid demands of the public. 

Insinuating and giving out at time* one calumny after an- 
other, they always kept behind the scenes, resolved, however, 
to ruin him in the public* esteem on the first opportunity, 
which they knew they would not have long to wait for from 
one so open, so passionate, so generous as Lord Byron. The 
greatest misfortune of his life — his marriage — gave them their 
opportunity. Then they came forth, threw down the mask 
which they had hitherto worn, to put on one more hideous 
still ; overturned the statue from the pedestal ujoon which the 
public had raised it, and tried to mutilate its remains. But 
as the stuff of which it was made was a marble which could 
not be broken, they only defiled, insulted, and outlawed it. 



78 French Portrait 

Then it was that France made acquaintance with Lord 
Byron. She saw him first mysteriously enveloped in the ro- 
mantic semblance of a Corsair, of a skeptical Harold, of a 
young lord who had despised and wounded his mother-coun- 
try, from which he had almost been obliged to exile himself, 
in consequence of a series of eccentricities, faults, and — who 
knows ? — of crimes, perhaps. Thus caught in a perfidious net, 
Lord Byron left England for Switzerland. 

He found Shelley, whom he only knew by name, at Geneva, 
where he stopped. Shelley was another victim of English 
fanatical and intolerant opinions ; but he, it may be allowed at 
least, had given cause for this by some reprehensible writings, 
in which he had declared himself an atheist. No allowance 
had been made for his youth, for he was only seventeen when 
he wrote " Queen Mab," and he found himself expelled not 
only from the university but also from his home, which was to 
him a real cause of sorrow and misfortune. 

Between these two great minds there existed a wide gulf 
— that which exists between pantheism and spiritualism ; but 
they had one great point of resemblance, their mutual passion- 
ate love for justice and humanity, their hatred of cant and 
hypocrisy, in fact, all the elevated sentiments of the moral 
and social man. With Lord Byron these noble dispositions 
of the heart and mind were naturally the consequence of his 
tastes and opinions, which were essentially spiritualistic. 
With Shelley, though in contradiction with his metaphysics, 
they were notwithstanding in harmony Avith the beautiful 
sentiments of his soul, which, when he was only twenty-three 
years of age, had already experienced the unkhidness of man. 
Their respective souls, wounded and hurt by the perfidious- 
ness and injustice of the world, felt themselves attracted to 
each other. A real friendship sprang up between them. 
They saw one another often, and it was in the conversations 
which they held together at this time that the seed was sown 
which shortly was to produce the works of genius which were 
to see the day at the foot of the Alps and under the blue sky 
of Italy. 

Although Lord Byron's heart was mortally wounded, still 
no feeling of hatred could find its way into it. The sorrow 
which he felt, the painful knowledge which he had of cruel 



Of Lord Bykon. 79 

and perfidious wrongs done to him, the pain of finding out 
the timidity of character of his friends, and the recollection 
of the many ungrateful people of whom he was the victim, all 
and each of these sentiments found their echo in the " Pris- 
oner of Chillon," in the third canto of " Childe Harold," 
in " Manfred," in the pathetic stanzas addressed to his sister, 
in the admirable and sublime monody on the death of Sher- 
idan, and in the " Dreani," which according to Moore, he must 
have written while shedding many bitter tears. According 
to the same authority, the latter poem is the most melan- 
choly and pathetic history that ever came forth from human 
pen. 

I shall not mention here the persecution to which Byron 
was subjected then, nor the evei'-manly, dignified, but heart- 
rending words which it drew forth from the noble poet in the 
midst of his I'etired, studious, regular, and virtuous existence. 
I shall speak of it elsewhere ; but I will say now that so unex- 
ampled, atrocious, and foolish was this persecution, that his 
enemies must have feared the awakening of the public con- 
science and the effects of a reaction, which might make them 
lose all the fruits of their victory, if they tarried in their efforts 
to prevent it. The most cruel among them was the poet 
laureate, in whose eyes Byron could have had but one defect — 
that of being superior to him. True, Byron had mentioned 
him in the famous satire which was the work of his youth ; 
but he had most generously expiated his crime by confessing 
. it, in buying up the fifth edition so as to annihilate it, and by 
declaring that he would have willingly suppressed even the 
memory of it. This noble action had gained for him the for- 
giveness and even the friendship of the most generous among 
them ; but the revengf ul poet laureate was not, as Byron said, 
" of those who forgive." 

This man arrived at Geneva, and at once set about his 
hateful work of revenge. This was all the easier on account 
of the spirit of cant which reigned in that country, and owing 
to the intimacy which he found to be existing between Byron 
and Shelley, for whom likewise he had conceived a malignant 
hatred. It must be said, however, that the laureate having 
to account for, among other works, his " Wat Tyler " (which 
had been pronounced to be an immoral book, and had been 



80 French Portrait 

prohibited on that account), rather trusted to his hypocrisy 
to regain for him the former credit he enjoyed. 

The intimacy between Byron and the spurned atheist Shel- 
ley presented a capital opportunity for this man to take his re- 
venge.' He circulated in Geneva all the false reports which 
had been current in London, and described Byron under the 
worst colors. Switzerland was at that time overrun by the 
English, whom the recently-signed Peace had attracted to the 
Continent. The laureate took the lead of tliose who tried to 
make the good but bigoted people of Geneva believe in aE 
the tittle-tattle against Byron which was passed about in 
London, and actually attempted to make a scandal of his very 
presence in their town. When he passed in the streets they 
stoj^ped to stare at him insolently, putting up their glasses 
to their eyes. They followed him in his rides ; they reported 
that he was seducing all the girls in the "Rue Basse," and, 
in fact, although his life was pei-fectly virtuous, one would 
have said tliat his presence was a contagion. Having found 
in a travellers' register the name of Shelley, accompanied by 
the qualification of "atheist!" which Byron had amiably 
struck out with his pen, the laureate caught at this and gave 
out that the two friends had declared themselves to be athe- 
ists. He attributed their friendship to infamous motives ; he 
spoke of incest and of other abominations, so odious that B}'- 
ron's friends deemed it prudent not to speak to him a word 
of all this at the time. He only learned it at Venice later.* 

* When political events obliged Count Gamba to quit Romagna, he thought 
at first of going with his fainilj' to take up his abode at Geneva. 

Lord Byron, on learning this, through a letter from the Countess Guiccioli. 
who had rejoined her famil}' at Florence, disapproved of their design, and begged 
Shelley — then on a visit to him at Ravenna — to express for him his disapproba- 
tion, and state the reasons of it. Shelley addressed the following letter in Italian 
to the countess, and the project was abandoned : — 

"Madam, — At the request of mj' friend, Lord Byron, I consider it my duty 
to offer you some considerations relative to the proposed journey to Geneva, so as 
to give you an idea of the undesirable results likely to follow. I flatter myself 
that you will accept this request of his, together with the motives leading me to 
ncquiesce, as an excuse for the liberty taken by a total stranger. In acting thus, 
the sole object I have in view is my friend's peace of mind, and that of those in 
whom he is so deeply interested. I have no other motive, nor can entertain any 
other; and let it suffice, in proof of my perfect sincerity, to assure you that I also 
have suffered from an intolerant clergy at home, and from tyranny, and that 1 
like your family, have met with persecution and calumny as my sole reward for 
love of countrv. 



Of Lord Byro^". 81 

Loaded with this very creditable amount of falsehoods, 
most of which were believed in Geneva, the laureate returned 

" Allow me, madam, to state the reasons for which it seems to me that Geneva 
would not be an appropriate residence for j'our farailj'. Your circumstances 
offer some analogy with those existing between my family and Lord Byron in the 
summer of 1816. Our dwellings were close together ; our mode of life was quiet 
and retired; it would be impossible to imagine an existence simpler than ours, 
less calculated to draw down the aspersions cast upon us. 

"These calumnies were of the most unheard-of nature, — really too infamous 
to permit us to treat them with disdain. Both Genevans and English establislieil 
at Geneva affirmed that we were leading a life of the most unblushing profligacj-. 
They said that we had made a compact together for outraging all held most sa- 
cred in human society. Pardon me, madam, if I spare j-ou the details. I will 
only say that incist, atheism, and many other things equally ridiculous or horri- 
h\?, were imputed to ixs. The English newspapers were not slow in propagating 
the scandal, and the nation lent entire faith. 

" Hardly any mode of annoying us was neglected. Persons living on the bor- 
ders of the lake opposite Lord Bj'ron's house made use of telescopes to sp_v out all 
his movements. An English lady fainted, or pretended to faint, with horror on 
seeing him enter a saloon. The most outrageous caricatures of him and his 
friends were circulated; and all this t(»ok place in the short pericd of three 
months. 

" The effect of this, on Lord Byron's mind, was most unhappj'. His natural 
ga^^ety abandoned him almost entirely. A man must be more or less than a stoic 
to bear such injuries with patience. 

"Do not flatter yourself, madam, with the idea, that because Englishmen ac- 
knowledge Lord Byron as the greatest poet of the day, they would therefore ab 
stain from annoying him, and, as far as it depended on tliem, from persecuting 
him. Their admiration for his works is unwillingly extorted, and the pleasure 
they experience in reading them does not allay prejudice nor stop caluninj'. 

" As to the Genevans, tbey would not disturb him, if there were not a colony 
of English established in tlie town, — persons who have carried with them a liost 
of mean prejudices and hatred against all those who excel or avoid them ; and as 
these causes would continue to exist, the same effects would doubtless follow. 

" The English are about as numerous at Geneva as the natives, and their 
riches cause them lo be sought after ; for the Genevans, compared to their guests, 
are like valets, or, at best, like hotel-keepers, having let their whole town to for- 
eigners. 

" A circumstance, personally known to me, may afford proof of what is to be 
expected at Geneva. The only inhabitant on whose attachment and honor Lord 
Byron thought he had every reason to count, turned out one of those who invented 
the most infamous calumnies. A friend of mine, deceived by him, involuntarily 
unveiled all his wickedness to me, and I was therefore obliged to inform my 
friend of the hypocrisy and per\'ersitj' we had discovered in this individual. Yuu 
can not, madam, conceive the excessive violence with which Englishmen, of a 
certain class, detest those whose conduct and opinions are not exactly framed on 
the model of their own. This s^'stem of ideas forms a superstition unceasingly 
demanding victims, and unceasingly finding them. But, however strong theo- 
logical hatred may be among them, it yields in intensity to social hatred. This 
sj'stem is quite the order of the day at Geneva ; and, having once been brought 
into play for the disquiet of Lord Byron and his friends, I much fear that the same 
causes would soon produce the same effects, if the intended journej' took place. 
Accustomed as you are, madam, to the gentler manners of Italy, A-ouwill scarcely 
be able to conceive to what a pitch this social hatred is carried in less favored 

D 2 • 



82 French Portrait 

to London to spread them iu England, so as to prevent the 
effects of the beautiful and touching poems which were pour- 
ed forth from the great and wounded soul of Byron, and 
which might have restored him to the esteem of all the hon- 
est and just minds of his country. 

Meanwhile Lady C. L having failed to discover any 

one who would accept the reward she offered to the person 
who would take Byron's life, had recourse to another means of 
injuring him — to a kind of moral assassination — Avhich she 
effected by the publication of her revengeful sentiments in 
the three volumes entitled " Glenarvou." Such a work might 
justify a biographer in passing it over with contempt with- 
out even mentioning it ; but as enemies of Lord Byron have 
made capital out of this book, — as it found credence even 
with some superior minds, such as Goethe's — as the intimacy 
which prefaced this revenge caused great sensation all over En- 
gland, and was a source of continual vexation and pain for 
Byron — it must not be passed over without comment, as 
Moore did to spare the susceptibility of living personages. 

Lady C. L (afterward Lady M ) belonged to the 

high ai-istocracy of England. Young, clever, and fashionable, 
but a little eccentric, she had been married some years when 
she fell so desperately in love with Lord Byron that she braved 
every thing for him. It was not Byron who made the first 
advances, for his powers of seduction were only the attrac- 
tiotfs with which nature had endowed him. His person, his 
voice, his look, — all in him was irresistible. In presenting 
himself anywhere, he could very well say with Shakspeare, in 
" Othello,"— 

"This onlj' is the witchcraft I have used." 

regions. I have been forced to pass through this hard experience, and to see all 
dearest to me entangled in inextricable slanders. My position bore some re- 
semblance to that of your brother, and it is for that reason I hasten to -Hrite you, 
in order to spare you and your family the evil i so fatally experienced. I re- 
frain from adding other reasons, and I pray you to excuse the freedom with 
which I have written, since it is dictated by sincerest motives, and justified by 
my friend's request. To him I leave the care of assuring you of my devotion to 
his interests, and to all those dear to him. 

" Deign, madam, to accept the expression of my highest esteem. 
" Your sincere and humble servant, 

•'Percy B. Shelley. 

" P.S. — You will forgive a barbarian, madam, for the bad Italian in which the 
honest sentiments of liis letter are couched." 



Of Lokd Byron. 88 

Loi'd Byron, who was then only twenty-three years of age, 
and not married, was flattered, and more than pleased, by this 

preference shown to him. Although Lady C. L 's beauty 

was not particularly attractive to him, and although her char- 
acter was exactly opposite to the ideal which he had formed 
of what woman's character should be, yet she contrived to in- 
terest him, to captivate him by the power of her love, and in 
a very short time to persuade him that he loved her. 

This sort of love could not last. It was destined to end in 
a catastrophe. LadyL 's jealousy was ridiculous. Dress- 
ed sometimes as a page, sometimes in another costume, she 
was wont to follow him by means of these disguises. She 
quai'relled and played the heroine, etc. Byron, who disliked 
quarrels of all kinds (and perhaps even the lady herself), be- 
sides being intimate with all her family, was too much the 
sufferer by this conduct not to endeavor to bring her back to 
a sense of reason and of her duty. He was indulging in the 
hope that he had succeeded in these endeavors when, at a ball 

given by Lady Heathcote, Lady L , after vain efforts to 

attract Byron's attention, went up to him and asked him 
whether she might waltz. Byron replied, half -absently, fhat 
he saw no reason why she should not ; upon which her pi'ide 
and her passion became so excited that she seized hold of a 
knife, and feigned to commit suicide. The ball was at once 
at an end, and all London was soon filled with accounts of 

this incident. Lady L had scarcely recovered from the 

slight wound she had inflicted on herself, when she wrote to 
a young peer, and made him all kinds of extravagant prom- 
ises, if he would consent to call out Byron and kill him. 
Tliis, however, did not prevent her calling again upon Lord 
Byron, not, however, says Medwin, with the intention of blow- 
ing his brains out ; as he was not at home, she wrote on one 
of his books 

" Remember me." 

On returning home, Byron read what she had written, and, 
filled with disgust and indignation, he wrote the famous lines 

"Remember thee! Ay, doubt it not," 

and sent her back several of her letters sealed up. " Glenar- 
von " was her revenge. She painted Byron in fiendish colors, 



84 French Foktrait 

giving herself all the qualities he possessed, so as to appear 
an angel, and to him all the passions of the " Giaoui-," of the 
" Corsair," and of " Childe Harold," so that he miglit be 
taken for a demon. 

In this novel, the result of revenge, truth asserts its rights, 
notwithstanding all the contradictions of which the book is 

full. Thus Lady L can not help depicting Byron under 

some" of his real characteristics. She was asked, for instance, 
what she thought of him, when she met him for the first time 
after hearing of his great reputation, and she answers, while 
gazing at the soft loveliness of his smile, — 

"What do I think? I think that never did the hand of 
God imprint upon a human form so lovely, so glorious an ex- 
pression." 

And further she adds : — 

" Never did the sculptor's hand, in the sublimest product 
of his talent, imagine a form and a face so exquisite, so full of 
animation or so varied in expression. Can one see him with- 
out being moved ? Oh ! is there in the nature of woman the 
possibility of listening to him, without cherishing every word 
he utters ? and having listened to him once, is it possible for 
any human heart ever to forget those accents which awaken 
every sentiment and calm every fear ?" 

Again : — 

" Oh better far to have died than to see or listen to Glen- 
arvon. When he smiled, his smile was like the light of 
heaven ; his voice was more soothing from its softness than 
the softest music. In his manner there Avas such a charm, 
that it would have been vain to affect even to be offended by 
its sweetness." 

But while she was obliged to obey the voice of passion 
and of truth, she took on the other hand as a motto to her 
novel that of the '^ Corsair," which even applied to the " Cor- 
sair " is not altogether just, for he was gifted with more than 
" one virtue : — " 

"He left a Corsair's name to other times, 
Linlt'd with one virtue and a thousand crimes." 

It is, however, fair to add, that this revenge became the 
punishment of the heroine; she. never again found any rest, 
struggled against a troubled mind, and never succeeded in 



OfLordByron. 85 

forgetting her love. It is even said that, diseased in mind 
and body, she was one day walking along one of the alleys of 
her beautiful place, on the road to Newstead Abbey, when 
she saw a funeral procession coming up the road in the direc- 
tion of Newstead. Having inquired whose iuneral it was, 
and being told it was that of the great poet, whose mortal re- 
mains were being conveyed to their last resting-place, she 
fainted, and died a few days afterward. His name was the 
last word she uttered, and this she did with love and despair. 
In London, and wherever the authoress was known, the book 
had no success, but the case was different abroad and in the 
provinces. 

Attracted as he always was toward all that is good, great, 
and sincere, Byron was wont to break the monotony of his re- 
tired hfe in the villa Diodati by frequent visits to Madame 
de Stael at her country-seat, " Coppet." She was the first 
who mentioned " Glenarvon " to him, and when Murray wrote 
to him on the subject, Byron simply replied, — 

" Of Glenarvon, Madame de Stael told me (ten days ago 
at Coppet) marvellous and grievous things ; but I have seen 
nothing of it but the motto, which pi-omises amiably ' for us 
and for our tragedy ' . . . ' a name to all succeeding,' etc. 
The generous moment selected for the publication is probabl}' 
its kindest accompaniment, and, truth to say, the time teas 
well chosen."* 

" I have not even a guess at its contents," said he, and he 
really attached no importance to its publication. But a few 
days later he had a proof of the bad effect which its appear- 
ance had produced, for all this venom against him had so poi- 
soned the mind of a poor old woman of sixty-three, an author- 
ess, that on Lord Byron entering Madame de Stael' s. drawing- 
room one afternoon, she fainted, or feigned to do so. Poor 
soul ! a writer of novels herself, and probably most partial to 
such reading, she had, no doubt, from the perusal of " Glenar- 
von " gleaned the idea tliat she had before her eyes that hide- 
ous monster of seduction and perpetrator of crimes who was 
therein depicted ! 

At last Lord Byron read this too famous novel, and wrote 
to Moore as follows on the subject : — 

* Moore, vol. ii. p. 8. 



S6 French Portrait 

" Madame de Stael lent me * Glenarvon ' last autumn. It 
seems to me that if the author had written the truth, and 
nothing but the truth, and the whole truth, the novel might 
not only have been more romantic but more amusing. As 
for the likeness, it can not be good, I did not sit long enough 
for it." 

From Venice Byron wrote as follows to Murray, in conse- 
quence of a series of articles which appeared in Germany, 
where a serious view had been taken of the novel of " Glen- 
arvon :" — 

" An Italian translation of ' Glenarvon ' was lately printed 
at Venice. The censor (Sgr. Petrolini) refused to sanction 
tlie publication till he had seen me on the subject. I told 
him that I did not recognize the slightest relation between 
that book and myself ; but that, whatever opinions might be 
held on that subject, I would never pi-event or oppose the pub- 
lication of any book in any language, on my own private ac- 
count, and desired him (against his inclination) to permit the 
poor translator to publish his labors. It is going forward in 
consequence. You may say this, with my compliments, to the 
author."* 

Madame de Stael had a great affectioti for Lord Byron, but 
his detractors had found their way into her house.f Among 
these was a distinguished lawyer, who had never been injured 
by any speech or word of Lord Byron, but who, setting him- 

* When that extra\-agant book " Glenarvon " appeared, Moore wrote a comic 
review on it, ami sent tlie papei- to Jeffrey, who thouglit it a good caricature, and 
wanted to pulilisli it in the " Edinbnrgh Review." But the friends of the author 
of " Glenarvon " interfered to such purpose that Jeffrey gave up the idea of men- 
tioning the novel at all, which was also approved by Lord Byron's friends as the 
best means of proving, by silence, the contempt such a book merited. 

f Madame de Stael said one day at Coppet, with an air of mystery, "You are 
often seen at night. Lord Bj^ron, id your bark upon the lake, accompanied by a 
white phantom." " Yes," answered he, " 'tis my dog." Madame de Stael shook 
her head, not at all convinced th.it he kept such innocent company, for her head 
had been tilled with fantastic tales and lies about him. In this instance, how- 
ever, she was somewhat right; for the white phantom was not only his dog, but 
often Mrs. Shelley, and even sometimes a young woman intimate wifh her. This 
lad)', with whom he had, and would have, nothing to do, was bent on running after 
him, although he did all in his power to avoid her. She succeeded sometimes 
in getting into the boat with the Shelleys. and thus made inquisitive people talk. 
But Lord Byron was very innocent in it all, and even victimized, for the ennui it 
caused him made him quit Switzerland and the Alps, he loved so well, before the 
season was even over. 



Of Lord Byron. 87 

self up as an amateur enemy of the poet, had, under an anony- 
mous designation, been one of his bitterest detractors in the 
" Edinburgh Review," on the occasion of the publication of 
his early poems. This same lawyer endeavored to gain Ma- 
dame de Stael over to his opinion of Byron's merit, probably 
on account of the very knowledge that he had of the harm 
he had done him ; hatred, like nobility, has its obligations. 
But Madame de Stael, who, on reading " Farewell," was wont 
to say that she wished almost she had been as unfortunate 
as Lady I^yron, was too elevated in mind and too noble in 
character to listen quietly to the abuse of Byron in which his 
enemies indulged. She, however, tried to induce Lord Byron 
to become reconciled to his wife, on the ground that one 
should never struggle against the current of public opinion. 
Madame de Stael actually succeeded in obtaining his permis- 
sion to endeavor to effect this reconciliation ; but the lawyer 
before mentioned used every argument to prevent her jjur- 
suing this project of mediation. 

Lord Byron's biographers have told how Lady Byron re- 
ceived this proposal ; which, after the way in which he had 
been treated, appears to have been, on the part of Byron, an 
act of almost superhuman generosity. Such an offer should 
have moved any being gifted with a heart and a soul. But I 
will not here speak of her refusal and of its consequences ; all 
I wish to state is, that the calumnies put forward against him 
being too absurd for Byron to condescend to notice, assumed 
a degree of consistency which deceived the public, and even 
made dupes of superior men, who in their turn contributed 
1*> make dupes of others. At this time, then, when the Avar 
and the continental blockade were at an end, when each and 
every one came pouring on to the Continent, did the star of 
Byron begin to shine on the European horizon ; but, instead 
of appearing as a sublime and bountiful star, it appeared sur- 
rounded by dark and ominous clouds. 

Lamartine, who was then travelling in Switzerland, was 
able to find in this sad state of things materials for his fine 
poem " Meditation," and for doubts whether Byron was " an 
angel, or a demon," according to the manner in which he was 
viewed, be it as a poet or as a man ; and, as if all this were 
not enough, a host of bad writings were attributed to his pen, _ 



88 F R E N C H P O R T R A I T 

which brought forth the following exj^ressions in a letter to 
Murray, his publisher : — 

" I had hoped that some other lie would have replaced and 
succeeded to the thousand and one falsehoods amassed during 
the winter. I can forgive all that is said of or against me, 
but not what I am made to say or sing under my own name. 
I have quite enough to answer for my own writings. It would 
be too much even for Job to bear Avhat he has not said. I be- 
lieve that the Arabian patriarch, when he wished his enemies 
had written a book, did not go so far as to be willing to sign 
his name on the first page." 

But the public mind was so disposed to look at Byron in 
the light of a demon, as traced by Lamartine, that when some 
young scattered-brain youth jDublished out of vanity, or per- 
haps for speculative motives, another monstrous invention, in 
the hope of passing it off as a work of Byron, he actually suc- 
ceeded for some time in his object without being discovered. 

" Strange destiny both of books and their authors !" ex- 
claims the writer of the " Essai sur Lord Byron," published in 
1823, — "an evidently apocryphal production, which was at 
once seen not to be genuine by all jjersons of taste, notwith- 
standing the forgery of the title, has contributed as much to 
make Byron known in France as have his best poems. A cer- 
tain P had impudence enough to attribute indirectly to 

the noble lord himself the absurd and disgusting tale of the 
'Vampire,' which Galignani, in Paris, hastened to pubUsh as 
kn acknowledged work of Byron. Upon this Lord Byron has- 
tened to remonstrate with Messieurs Galignani ; but unfortu- 
nately too late, and after the reputation of the book Avas already 
widespread. Our theatres appropriated the subject, and the 
story of Lord Ruthven swelled into two volumes which created 
some sensation."* 

Goethe also believed the novels to be true stories, and was 
especially impressed with " Glenarvon."f It is reported that 

* "Essai sur Lord Byron," p. 177. 

t Lord Byron wrote to Moore in November, 1820:— 

" PrajS where did you get hold of Goethe's ' Florentine ' husband-killing 
story ? Upon such matters, in general, I may say, with Beau Clinker, in reply 
to Errand's wife : — 

" ' Oh, the villain, he hath murdered my poor Timothy !' 

" Clinker.— ' Damn your Timothy ! I'tell you, woman, your husband has 
.raurdr'-d me— he has carried away my fine jubilee clothes.'" 



Of Lord Bykox. 89 

he became jealous of Byron on the appearance of the poem of 
" Manfred." If he were not, it is at least certain that the pa- 
gan patriarch never could sympathize with the new generation 
of Christian geniuses. 

On the 7th of June, however, of the year 1820, Byron writes 
as follows to Murray, from Ravenna : — 

" Inclosed is something which will interest you, to wit, the 
opinion of the greatest man of Germany, perhaps of Europe, 
upon one of the great men of your advertisements (all ' famous 
hands,' as Jacob Tonson used to say of his ragamuffins) — in 
short, a critique of Goethe's upon ' Manfred.' There is the 
original, an English translation, and an Italian one ; keep them 
all in your archives, for the opinions of such a man as Goethe, 
whether favorable or not, are always interesting; and this more 
so, as being favorable. His ' Faust ' I never read, for I don't 
know German ; but Matthew Monk Lewis, in 1816, at Geneva, 
translated most of it to me vivd voce, and I was naturally much 
struck with it : but it was the ' Steinbach,' and the ' Yung- 
frau,' and something else, much more than 'Faustus,' that 
made me write ' Manfred.' The first scene, however, and that 
of ' Faustus ' are very similar," 

One can scarcely conceive how so great a mind as that of 
Goethe could have been duped by such mystifications. And 
yet this is wha| he wrote at that time in a German paper rel- 
ative to Byron's " Manfred :"— 

" We find in this tragedy the quintessence of the most as- 
tonishing talent borne to be its own tormentor. The charac- 
ter of Lord Byron's life" and poetry hardly permits a just and 
equitable appreciation. He has often enough confessed what 
it is that torments him. He has repeatedly portrayed it, and 
scarcely any one feels compassion for this intolerable suffer- 
ing over which he is' ever laboriously ruminating. There ai'e, 
properly speaking, two females whose phantoms forever haunt 
him, and which, in this piece also, perform principal parts, one 
under the name of Astarte, the other without form or actual 
presence, and merely a voice. Of the horrid occurrence which 
took place with the former the following is related. When a 
bold and enterprising young man, he won the affections of a 
Florentine lady. Her husband discovered the amour, and 
murdered his wife ; but the murderer was the same night 



90 French Portrait 

found dead in the street, and thei'e was no one to whom any 
suspicion could be attaclied. Lord Byron removed from Flor- 
ence, and these spirits haunted him all his life after. 

" This romantic incident is rendered highly probable by in- 
numerable allusions to it in his poems." 

And Moore adds : — " The grave confidence with which the 
venerable critic traces the fancies of his brother poet to real 
persons and events, making no difficulty even of a double 
murder at Florence, to furnish grounds for his theory, affords 
an amusing instance of the disposition, so prevalent through- 
out Europe, to picture Byron as a man full of marvels and 
mysteries, as well in his life as his poetry. To these exagger- 
ated or wholly false notions of him, the numei'ous fictions 
palmed upon the world, of his romantic tours and wonderful 
adventures in places he never saw, and with persons who nev- 
er existed, have, no doubt, considerably contributed, and the 
consequence is, so utterly out of truth and nature are the rep- 
resentations of his life and character long current upon the 
Continent, that it may be questioned whether the real ' flesh 
and blood ' hero of these pages (the social, practical-minded, 
and, with all his faults and eccentricities, English Lord Byron) 
may not, to the over-exalted imaginations of most of his for- 
eign admirers, appear only an ordinary, unromantic, and pro- 
saic personage." 

Then, quoting some of the falsehoods which were spread 
everywhere about Byron, Moore says : — 

" Of this kind are the accounts, filled with all sorts of cir- 
cumstantial wonders, of his residence in the island of Myti- 
lene ; his voyages to Sicily, to Ithaca, with the Countess Guic- 
cioli, etc. But the most absurd, perhaps, of all these fabri- 
cations are the stories told by Pouqueville, of the poet's re- 
ligious conferences in the cell of Father Paul, at Athens ; 
and the still more unconscionable fiction in which Rizo has in- 
dulged, in giving the details of a pretended theatrical scene, 
got up (according to this poetical historian) between Lord 
Byron and the Archbishop of Arta, at the tomb of Botzaris, 
at Missolonghi." 

As the numerous causes which led to the false judgment of 
Byron's true character never ceased to exist during his life- 
time, one consequence has been that those who never knew 



Of Lord Byron. 91 

liim have never been able to arrive at tl)e truth of matters 
concerning him. The contrast which existed between the 
real and imaginary j)ersonage was such as to cause the great- 
est astonishment to all those who, having hitherto adopted 
the received notions about him, at last came to know him at 
Ravenna, at Pisa, at Genoa, and in Greece, up to the very last 
days of his life. But, before quoting some of these fortunate 
travellers, I must transcribe a few more passages from Moore : 

" On my rejoining him in town this spring, I found the en- 
thusiasm about his writings and himself, which I had left so 
prevalent, both in the world of literature and society, grown, 
if any thing, still more genuine and intense. In the immedi- 
ate circle perhaps around him, familiarity of intercourse must 
have begun to produce its usual disenchanting effect." 

" His own liveliness and unreserve, on a more intimate ac- 
quaintance, would not be long in dispelling that charm of po- 
etic sadness, which to the eyes of distant observers hung about 
him ; while the romantic notions, connected by some of his 
fair readers with those past and nameless loves alluded to in 
his poems, ran some risk of abatement from too near an ac- 
quaintance with the supposed objects of his fancy and fond- 
ness at present." 

" But, whatever of its first romantic impression the person- 
al character of the poet may, from such causes, have lost in 
the circle he most frequented, this disappointment of the im- 
agination was far more than compensated by the frank, social, 
and engaging qualities, both of disposition and manner, which, 
on a nearer intercourse, he disclosed, as well as by that entire 
absence oi any literary assumption or pedantry, which entitled 
him fully to the praise bestowed by Sj^rat iipon Cowley — 
that few could ever discover he was a great poet by his dis- 
course." 

While thus by his friends, he was seen in his ti'ue colors, 
in his weakness and in his strength, to strangers, and such as 
were out of this immediate circle, the sternness of his imag- 
inary personages were, by the greater number of them, sup- 
posed to belong, not only as regarded mind, but manners, to 
liimself. So prevalent and pei'severing has been this notion, 
that, in some disquisitions on his character published since 
his death, and containing otherwise many jiist and striking 



92 French Portrait 

views, Ave find, in the portrait draAvn of him, such features as 
the following : — " Lord Byron liad a stern, direct, severe mind : 
a sarcastic, disdainful, gloomy temper. He had no sympathy 
with a flippant cheerfulness : upon the surface Av-^as sourness, 
discontent, displeasure, ill-will. Of this sort of double aspect 
which he presented, the aspect in which he was viewed by the 
world and by his friends, he was himself fully aware ; and it 
not only amused him, but indeed to a certain extent, flattered 
his pride." 

" And if there was ever any tendency to derangement in his 
mental conformation, on this point alone could it be pronounced 
to have manifested itself. In the early part of ray acquaint- 
ance with him, when he most gave way to this humor, I have 
known him more than once, as we have sat together after din- 
ner, to fall seriously into this sort of dark and self-accusing 
mood, and throw out hints of his past life with an air of gloom 
and mystery designed evidejitly to awaken curiosity and in- 
terest .... It has sometimes occurred to me that the occult 
cause of his lady's reparation from him, round which herself 
and her legal adviser have throAvn such formidable mystery, 
may have been nothing more, after all, than some impostui'e 
of this kind, intended only to mystify and surprise, while it 
Avas taken in sober seriousness." 

I have mentioned elscAvhere how Moore, while justly ap- 
preciating the consequences of this youthful eccentricity, — of 
Avhich later, but too late, Byron corrected himself, — does not 
equally appreciate the motives, or rather the principal motive, 
Avhich gave rise to it. As, however, he judges rightly of the 
results, I shall continue to quote him for the reader's benefit. 

" M. Galignani, having expressed a wish to be furnished 
Avith a short memoir of Lord Byron for the purpose of pre- 
fixing it to the French edition of his Avorks, I had said jest- 
ingly, in a preceding letter to his lordship, that it Avould but 
be a fair satire on the disposition of the world to ' remonster 
his features' if he would Avrite for the public, English as well 
as French, a sort of mock heroic account of himself, outdoing 
in horrors and wonders all that had been yet related or be- 
lieved of him, and leaving even Goethe's story of the double 
murder at Florence far behind." 

Lord Byron replied from Pisa, on the 12th of December, 



Of Lord Byron. 93 

1821 : — " What you say about Galignani's two biographies is 
very amusing ; and, if I were not lazy, I would certainly do 
what you desire. But I doubt my present stock of f acetious- 
ness — that is, of good serious humor — so as not to let the cat 
out of the bag. I wish you would undertake it. I will for- 
give and indulge you (like a pope) beforehand, for any thing 
ludicrous that might keep those fools in their own dear belief 
that a man is a loup-garou. 

" I suppose I told you that the ' Giaour ' story had actvially 
some foundation in fact. . . I should not like marvels to rest 
upon any account of my own, and shall say nothing about 
it. . . The worst of any real adventures is that they involve 
living people." 

He at last tired of always appearing in the guise of a cor- 
sair, or of a mysterious criminal, or of a hero of melodrama. 
These various disguises had afforded him too much pain, and 
one day he said to Mr. Medwin : — 

" When Galignani thought of publishing a fresh edition of 
my works he wrote to Moore to ask him to give him some 
anecdotes respecting me : and we thought of composing a 
narrative filled with the most impossible and incredible ad- 
ventures, to amuse the Parisians. But I reflected that there 
were already too many ready-made stories about me, to puzzle 
my brain to invent new ones." 

Mr. Medwin adds : — 

" The reader will laugh when he hears that one of my 
friends assured me that the lines of Thyrza, published with 
the first canto to ' Childe Harold,' were addressed by Byron 
to his bear ! There is nothing too wicked to be invented by 
hatred, or believed by ignorance." 

Moore often refers to the wonderful contrast which exist- 
ed between the real and imaginary Byron. Thus, in speak- 
ing of his incredibly active and sublime genius at Venice, he 
says : — 

" While thus at this period, more remarkably than at any 
other during his life, the unparalleled versatility of his genius 
was unfolding itself, those quick, chameleon-like changes of 
which his character, too, was capable, were, during the same 
time, most vividly and in strongest conti-ast, dra^vn out. To 
the v,'orld, and more especially to England, — the scene at once 



91 Feench Portrait 

of his glories and his wrongs, — he presented himself in no 
other aspect than that of a stern, haughty misanthrope, self- 
banished from the fellowship of men, and most of all from that 
of Englishmen " 

How totally all this differed from the Byron of the social 
hour, they who lived in familiar intercourse \Yith him may 
be safely left to tell. The reputation which he had acquired 
for himself abroad, prevented numbers, of course, of his coun- 
trymen, whom he would most cordially have welcomed, from 
seeking his acquaintance. But as it was, no " English gentle- 
man ever approached him, with the common forms of intro- 
duction, that did not come away at once surprised and charm- 
ed by the kind courtesy and facility of his manners, the unpre- 
tending play of his conversation, and, on a nearer intercourse, 
the frank youthful spirits, to the flow of which he gave way 
with such a zest as even to deceive some of those who best 
knew him into the impression that gayety was, after all, the 
true bent of his disposition." 

I must confine myself to these quotations, as it is not in 
my power to reproduce all that Moore has said on the subject. 
His statements, however, prove two things : — 

First, that Lord Byron, instead of being a dark and gloomy 
hero of romance, was a man full of amiability, goodness, grace, 
sociability, and liveliness. Of the impression produced upon 
all those who knew him in these combined qualities, I shall 
have occasion to speak hereafter. 

Secondly, that since even after Byron's death the fantast- 
ical notions about him were entertained even by so impartial 
and so enlightened a person as Sir Edward Brydges, it is not 
surprising (nor should they be blamed for it) that Frenchmen, 
and all foreigners in general, and even a great portion of 
Englishmen, should have believed in this fallacy. There was 
no means at that time of clearing up the mystery, nor can one 
see in this behef, however exaggerated, especially in France and 
on the Continent, any spirit either of direct hostility, or even 
ill-will toward him. The error was exported from England, 
and upon it they reasoned, logically and oftentimes wittily. 
But surely those can not be absolved who still adhere to the 
old errors, after the true state of things had been disclosed at 
the poet's death in the writings of such biographers as Mooi-c, 



Of Lord Byron. 95 

Parry, Medwin himself, Count Gamba, and others who knew 
Byron personally. 

That a portion of the British public should maintain cer- 
tain prejudices, and pi'eserve a certain animosity against By- 
ron, is not matter of astonishment to those who have at all 
studied the English character. The spirit of tolerance which 
exists in the laws, is far from pervading the habits of the peo- 
jjle ; cant is on the decrease, but not quite gone, and may 
still lead one to a very fair social position. There still live a 
host of enemies whom Byron had made during his lifetime, 
and the number of whom (owing to a bona fide treachery, by 
the indiscreet publication of a corresi^ondence which was des- 
tined to be kept secret and in the dark), increased greatly 
after his death from the number of people whose pride he 
had therein wounded. 

He may be liable to the punishment due to his having 
trespassed on certain exclusively English notions of virtue, 
as intimated in the condemnation of the imaginary immoral- 
ity of some of his works. He may be accused, with some 
truth, of having been too severe toward several persons and 
things. But not one of these reasons has any locus standi in 
France, — a country which might claim a certain share in the 
lionor of having been his mother-country. Besides having a 
French turn of mind in many respects, Byron, descended di- 
rectly from a French stock, had been conceived in France, 
and had long lived in its neighborhood. If those, therefore, 
may be absolved who falsely appreciated Byi'on's character 
both before and immediately after his death, the same indul- 
gence can not be extended to those who persist in their unjust 
conclusions. Such men were greatly to blame ; for, in writ- 
ing about Byron, they were bound in conscience to consult 
the biographers who had known him, and having neglected 
to do so, either from idleness or from party spirit, they failed 
in their duty as just and honorable men. 

Before finishing this chapter, we must add to these pages, 
Avhich were Avritten many years ago, a few remarks suggest- 
ed by the perusal of a recent work w^hich has caused great 
sensation by the talent which pervades it, by its boldness, and 
original writing. I allude to the work of M. Taine upon En- 
glish literature ; therein he appreciates, in a manly, fine style. 



96 Fkench Portrait 

all the loftiness of Lord Byron's poetry, but always under the 
influence of a received, and not self-formed, opinion. He 
likewise deserves, by his appreciations and conclusions, the 
reproaches addressed to the other critics of the illustrious and 
calumniated poet. In this work, which is rather magnificent 
than solid, and which contains a whole psychological system, 
one note is ever uppermost, — that of disdain. Contempt, 
however, is not his object, but only his means. All must be 
sacrificed to the triumph of his opinions. 

The glory of nations, great souls, great minds, their works, 
their deeds, all must serve to complement his victory. Bos- 
suet, Newton, Dante, Shakspeare, Corneille, Byron, all have 
erred. If he despises them, if he blames them, it is only to 
show that they have not been able to discover the logical con- 
clusions which M. Taine at last reveals to us, — conclusions 
which are to transform and change the soul as well as the un- 
derstanding. This doctrine has hitherto been but a dream, 
and society has, up to the present time, walked in darkness. 

This philosophical system is so beautifully set forth, that it 
can only be compared to a skeleton, upon which a profusion 
of lovely-scented flowers and precious jewels have been heap- 
ed, so that, notwithstanding the horror it inspires, one is una- 
ble to leave it. 

Here, then, we find that M. Taine comes forth resolutely, 
by the help of a vigorous understanding and a surpassing tal- 
ent, to review all that England has produced in a literary 
sense, — authors as well as their works. The type which he 
has conceived alone escapes his censure. This type must be 
the result of thi'ee primeval causes, viz., race, centre and time. 
History must prove its correctness. History and logic might 
in vain claim his indulgence on behalf of other types. He 
has conceived his system in his own mind, and, to establish 
it, facts and characters are made subservient to it ; history's 
duty is to prove their correctness. Indulgence can be shown 
to one type only. 

All he says is, however, so well said, that if he offended 
truth a little less, if he only spoke for beings in another plan- 
et, and above all, if, under these beautiful surroundings, one 
failed to notice the gloom of a heaven without God, the work 
would enchant one. 



Of Lord Byron. 97 

It must be allowed that the charms of truth are still to be 
preferred ; we must therefore be allowed to say a few words 
about M. Taine's system. It can only be in one sense ; not 
on account of any philosophical pretension, nor in the hope of 
restoring nature to its rights, however much we may grieve 
at seeing it reduced to a mere animal, nay, a vegetable, and 
alas ! may be, a mineral system. 

Many able pens will repeat the admirable words of one of 
the cleverest men of the day, who, in his criticism upon M. 
Taine^'s book, has so thoroughly examined how far a phys- 
iological method could be apphed to the comprehension of 
moral and intellectual phenomena, and has shown to w^hat fa- 
tal consequences such a method must lead. The analysis of 
the moral world, the study of souls and of talent, of doctrines 
and of characters, become in M. Taine's mind only a bi-anch of 
zoology, and psychology ends by being only a part of natural 
history. 

Many other able writers will echo the noble words of M. 
Caro, and wnll not fail to point out the numerous contradic- 
tions which exist between the work itself and history proper, 
between it and natural history, and, finally, between it and the 
author himself. 

Thus, men who have never allowed that a thistle could 
produce a rose, will question also whether those young En- 
glishmen, whom M. Taine depicts in such glowing colors, — 
*' So active," says he, " just like harriers on the beat flaring 
the air in the midst of the hunt," can be transformed in a few 
years " into beings resembling animals good for slaughter, 
with appearances equally anxious, vacant, and stupid ; gentle- 
men six feet high, with long and stout German bodies, issuing 
from their forests with savage-looking whiskers and rolling 
eyes of pale earth enware-bli;e color." 

Such critics will question whether the " pale eartheuAvare- 
blue eyes " of these ugly sires can possibly be those of the fa- 
thers of the candid-eyed girls, the fairest among the fair treas- 
ures of this earth, whom M. Taine describes in such exquisite 
terms : — 

" Delightful creatures, whose freshness and innocence can 
not be conceived by those who have never seen them ! full- 
blown flowers, of which a morning rose, with its delicious and 

E 



98 French Portrait 

delicate coloi*, with its petals dipped in dew, can alone give an 
idea." 

Clitics will deny the possibility of the existence of such a 
phenomenon, so contrary to the laws of creation does it seem 
to be. Such airy-like forms can not be produced by such 
heavy brutes as he describes. Say what he likes, nature can 
not act in the manner indicated by M. Taine. Nature must 
ever follow the same track. 

We, however, shall confine ourselves to oppose the real 
Lord Byron to the fanciful one of M. Taine ; and we say that 
the portrait of the poet drawn by the latter is drawn system- 
atically, in such a manner as to contribute to the general har- 
mony of his work. But truth can not be subservient to sys- 
tems. As M. Taine views Lord Byron from a false starting 
point, it follows that, of course, the whole portrait of him is 
equally unreal. 

All the colors in his picture are too dark. What he says 
of the poet is not so false as it is exaggerated. This is a 
method peculiar to him. He decidedly perceives the real per- 
son, but exaggerates him, and thus fails to realize the original. 

If the facts are not always entirely false, his conclusions, 
and the consequences suggested to him by them, are always 
eminently so. 

When the facts seem ever so little to lend themselves to 
his reasoning, when the proportions of his victim allow of their 
being placed in the heel of Procrustes, the magnificent draper- 
ies of which do not hide the atrocious torture ; then, indeed, 
does M. Taine respect history more or less ; when this is not 
the case, his imagination supplies the deficiency. On this 
principle he gives us his details of Lord Byron's parents and 
of the poet's childhood. 

He makes use of Lord Byron as an artist makes use of a 
machine : he places him in the position which he has chosen 
himself, gives him the gesture he pleases, and the expression 
he wishes. The portrait he shows us of him may be a little 
like Lord Byron ; but a very distant likeness, one surrounded 
by a Avorld of caprice of fancy and eccentricity which serve to 
make up a powerful picture. It is the effect of a well-posed 
manikin, with its vei'y flexible articulations, all placed at the 
disposal of M. Taine's system. The features may be slightly 



Of Lord Byron. 99 

those of Lord Byron, but the gestures and the general physi- 
ognomy are the clever creations of the artist. 

This is how he proceeds, in order to obtain the triumph of 
his views : — 

He selects some quarter of an hour from the life of a man, 
probably that during which he obeyed the hnpulses of nature, 
and judges his whole existence and character by this short 
space of time. 

He takes from the author's career one page, perhaps that 
which he may have written in a moment of hallucination or of 
exti'eme passion ; and by this single page he judges the author 
of ten volumes. 

Take Lord Byron, for instance. With regard to his infan- 
cy, M. Taine takes care to set aside all that he knows to be 
admirable in the boy, and only notices one instance of energy, 
one fit of heroic passion, into which the unjust reprimand of 
a maid had driven him. The touching tears which the little 
Byron sheds when, in the midst of his playmates, he is inform- 
ed that he has been raised to the dignity of a peer of the 
realm, are no sign to M. Taine of a character equally timid, 
sensitive, and good, but the result of pride. In this trait 
alone, M. Taine sees almost sufficient ground to lay thereon 
the foundations of his woi'k, and to show us in the boy what 
the man was to be. A similar process is used in the examina- 
tion of Byron as an author. He analyzes " Manfred," which 
is most decidedly a work of prodigious power, and all he says 
of it is certainly both true and worthy of his OAvn great tal- 
ent ; biat is it fair to say that the poet and the man are entire- 
ly revealed in this work, and to dismiss all the other creations 
of the poet, wherein milder qualities, such as feeling, tender- 
ness, and goodness are revealed, and shine forth most promi- 
nently ? " Manfred " is the cry of an ulcerated heart, still 
struggling, with all the energy of a most powerful soul, 
against the brutal decrees of a recent persecution. Lord By- 
ron felt himself to be the victim of the relentless conduct of 
Lady Byron, and if his mind was not deranged, at least his 
soul was wounded and ill at ease, and it was this spirit that 
dictated " Manfred." Did he not clearly confess it himself ? 
When he sent "Manfred" to Murray, did he not say that it 
was a drama as mad as the tragedy of " Lee Bedlam," in 



100 French Portrait 

twenty-five acts, and a few comic scenes — his own being only 
in three acts ? 

Did he not write to Moore as follows ? — 

" I wrote a sort of mad drama for the sake of introducing 
the Alpine scenery. Almost all the dramatis personcB are 
spirits, ghosts, or fnagicians ; and the scene is in the Alps and 
the other world, so yon may suppose what a Bedlam tragedy 
it must be The third act, like the Archbishop of Gre- 
nada's homily (which savored of the palsy), has the dregs of 
my fever, during which it was written. It must on no account 
be published in its present state The speech of Man- 
fred to the sun is the only part of this act I thought good my- 
self ; the rest is certainly as bad as bad can be, and 1 wonder 
what the devil possessed me." 

But let Byron's ideas take a different turn, as the lovely 
blue Italian sky and the refreshing breezes from the Adriatic 
waters contribute to quicken his blood, and other tones will 
be heard, wherein no longer shall the excesses, but the beau- 
ties only of energy be discernible. 

What does M. Taine say then ? This new aspect does not, 
evidently, satisfy him ! but what of that ? He goes on to say 
that Byron's genius is falling off. If the poet takes advan- 
tage of a few moments of melancholy common to all poetical 
and feeling souls, M. Taine declares that the melancholy En- 
glish nature is always associated with the epicurean. What is 
it to him, that England thinks differently ? that in her opinion 
Lord Byron's grandest and noblest conceptions are the poems 
which he wrote in Italy, and even on the eve of his death ? and 
that she finds his liveliness " too real and too ultramontane to 
suit her national tastes ?" Nothing of this troubles M. Taine. 

Is it quite fair to judge so powerful a mind, so great and 
yet so simple a being as Lord Byron, only by his " Manfred," 
or by some other passages of his works, and especially of 
" Don Juan ?" Can his amiable, docile, tender, and feeling na- 
ture honestly be seen in the child of three years of age, who 
tears his clothes because his nurse has punished him unfairly ? 
No ; all that we see is what M. Taine wishes us to see for the 
purpose he has in view, that is, admiration of the Lord Byron 
he has conceived, and who is necessary to his cause, — a By- 
ron onlv to be likened to a furious storm. 



Of Lord Byron. lOi 

Wishing Byron to appear as the type of energy, M. Taine 
exhibits him to our eyes in the light of Satan defying all pow- 
ers on earth and in heaven. The better to mould him to the 
form he has chosen, he begins by disfiguring him in the arms of 
his mother, whom with his father and his family he scruples not 
to calumniate. Storms having their origin in the rupture of 
the elements, and a violent character being, according to M. 
Taine, the result of several forces acting internally and me- 
chanically ; it follows that its primary cause is to be found in 
the disturbed moral condition of those who have given birth 
to him in the circumstances under which the child was born, 
and in the influence under which he has been brought up. 
Hence the necessity of supplementing from imagination the 
historical and logical facts which otherwise might be at fault. 

As for Lord Byron's softness of manner, and as to that ten- 
derness of character which was the bane of his existence, — as 
to his real and great goodness, which made him loved always 
and everywhere, and which caused such bitter tears to be 
shed at the news of his death,-^these qualities are not to be 
sought in the strange, fanciful being who is styled Byron by M. 
Taine. These qualities would be out of place ; they would be 
opposed to the idea upon which his entire system is founded. 
They must be merged in the energy and greatness of intellect 
of the poetical giant. 

Unfortunately for M. Taine, facts speak too forcibly and too 
inopportunely against him. Not one of the causes Avhich he 
mentions, not one of the conclusions which he draws in respect 
to Lord Byron's character as a poet, and as a mere mortal, are 
to be relied upon. He, who contends that he possesses pre- 
eminently the power of comprehending the man and the author, 
insists that Lord Byron was no exception to the rule, though his 
best biographer, Moore, most distinctly opposes this opinion : — 

" In Lord Byron, however, this sort of pivot of character 

was almost wholly wanting So various indeed, and 

contradictory, were his attributes, both moral and intellectual, 
that he may be pronounced to* have been not one, but many ; 
nor would it be any great exaggeration of the truth to say 
that out of the mere partition of the properties of his single 
mind a plurality of characters, all different and all vigorous, 
might have been furnished." 



102 French Portrait 

On the other hand, M, Taine, who generally pays little at- 
tention to the opinion of others, gives as Lord Byron's pre- 
dominant characteristic that which phrenologists denominate 
" comhativite.'''' Which of the two is likely to be right ? If 
Moore is right. Lord Byron must have been almost wanting 
in consistency of character; if Taine is correct, then Byron 
was really of a most passionate nature. But as we have 
proved that Lord Byron was not inconsistent, as Moore de- 
clares, except in cases where this want of consistency did not 
interfere with his character as a man, and, on the other hand, 
that no one had a less combative disposition, we are forced to 
arrive at the conclusion that if Byron had one dominant pas- 
sion, it was most decidedly not that of " comhativite.^'' It is 
impossible to deny that if in his early youth signs of resist- 
ance may have appeared in his character, yet these had so 
completely disappeared with the development of his intellect 
and of his moral sentiments that no one more than himself 
hated controversies and discussions of all kinds. In fact, no 
one was more obedient to the call of reason and of friend- 
ship ; and his whole life is an illustration of it. 

In order that Lord Byron should represent the English 
type, even if we adopt M. Taine's philosophy, he should have 
had a deal of Saxon blood in his veins. But this was not the 
case. It is the Norman blood which predominates. He may 
be said to have been almost borne in France, and to be of 
French extraction by his father, and of Scotch origin through 
his mother. The total absence of the Saxon element, which 
was so remarkable in him, was equally noticeable in his tastes, 
mind, sympathies, and inclinations. 

He loved France very dearly, and Pouqueville tells a story, 
that when Ali Pasha had got over the fright caused by the 
announcement that a young traveller, named Byron (his name 
had been pronounced Bairon, which made the Pasha believe 
he was a Turk in disguise), wished to see him, he received 
the young lord very cordially. As he had just conquered 
Preveza from the French, Ali* Pasha thought he should be 
pleasing the Englishman by announcing the fact to him. By- 
ron replied — " But I am no enemy of France. Quite the con- 
trary, I love France." 

It might almost be said that he was quite the opposite of 



Of Lord Bykon. 103 

what a Saxon should be. Lord Byron could not remain, and, 
actually, lived a very short time, in England. His habits were 
not English, nor his mode of living. Far from over-eating, as 
the English, according to M. Taine, are said to do, Byron did 
not eat enough. He was as sober as a monk. His favorite 
food was vegetables. His abstinence from meat dated from 
his youth. His body was little adapted to the material wants 
of his country. This remarkable sobriety was the effect of 
taste and principle, and was in no ways broken by excesses 
which might have acted as compensations. The excesses of 
which M. Taine speaks must have been at the utmost some 
slight deviations from the real Pythagorean abstinence which 
he had laid down as the rule of his life. Abroad, where he 
lived almost all his life, he had none of the habits of his coun- 
trymen. He lived everywhere as a cosmopolitan. All that 
his body craved for was cleanliness, and this only served to 
improve his health and the marvellous beauty with which God 
had gifted him. 

Lord Byron was so little partial to the characteristic feat- 
ures and customs of the country in which he was born — " but 
where he would not die " — that the then so susceptible amour- 
propre of his countrymen reproached him with it as a most 
unpardonable fault. 

It was not he who would have placed England and the En- 
glish above all foreigners, and Frenchmen in particular ; nor 
was it he who would have declai-ed them to be the princes of 
the human race. Justice and truth forbade his committing 
himself to such statements in the name of national pride. 

Are the animal rather than moral, and moral rather than 
intellectual instincts of energy and will, which M. Taine so 
much admires in the Saxon race, defects or qualities in his 
eyes ? It is difficult to say, for one never knows when he is 
praising or when he is condemning. Judging by the very ma- 
terial causes from which he derives this energy, — namely, the 
constitution of the people, their climate, their f i-equent crav- 
ing for food, their way of cooking the food they eat, their 
drinks, and all the consequences of these necessities visible in 
the absence of all sense, of delicacy, of all appreciation of the 
fine arts, and the comprehension of philosophy, — he must ev- 
idently intend to depreciate them. 



104 Feench Portkait 

But as regards Lord Byron in particular, it is equally cer- 
tain that he has no intention of depreciating him. For him 
alone he finds expressions of great admiration and real sym- 
pathy. He allows him to represent the whole nation, and to 
be the incarnation of the English character ; but on one con- 
dition, — that of ruling it as its sovereign. Thanks to this su- 
premacy, the poet escapes more or less the exigencies of M. 
Taine's theories. 

M. Taine, however, is not subject to the weakness of enthu- 
siasm. Judging, as he does, in the light of a lover of nature, 
both of the merits of virtue and of the demerits of vice, which 
to him are but fatal results of the constitution, the climate, and 
the soil — " in a like manner will sugar and vitriol " — why care 
about Lord Byron doing this or the other rightly or wronfjhj 
rather than any one else ? Nature follows its necessary track, 
seeks its equilibrium, and ends by finding it. 

What pleases him in Lord Byron, is the facility which is 
offered to him of proving the truth of this fatalist philosophy 
which appeal's at every page of his book. 

No one more than Byron could serve the purpose of M. 
Taine, and become, as it were, the basis of his philosophical op- 
erations. 

His powerful genius, his short but eventful existence, Avhich 
did not give time for the cooling down of the ardor of yoiith, 
to harmonize it with the tempered dictates of mature age, — 
the universality of his mind, which can furnish arguments to 
every species of critics, — all contributed wonderfully to the 
realization of M. Taine's object. 

Thus, thanks to the deceptive but generally received por- 
trait which is said to be that of Lord Byron, and to his iden- 
tification with the heroes of his poems, and in particular with 
"Manfred" and " Childe Harold," aided by the impossibility 
which the human mind finds in estimating moral subjects as 
it would a proposition of "Euclid," M. Taine has been able 
to make use of a great name, and to make a fine demonstra- 
tion of his system, to call Byron the interpreter of the British 
genius, and his poetry the expression of the man himself. 

In many respects, however, he has not been able to act in 
this way without violating historical facts. This is what I 
hope to point out in these pages, the object of which is to 



Of Lokd Byron. 105 

describe Byron as he was, and to substitute, without any der- 
ogation to his sublimity of character, the reality for the fic- 
tion created by M. Taine. To refute so brilliant and so pow- 
erful a writer, my only means is to proceed in this work with 
the help of positive proofs of the statements which I make, 
and by invoking unimpeachable testimonies. These alone 
constitute weighty arguments, since they all contribute to 
produce the same impression. In order that truth may be 
restored to history, I shall adopt a system diametrically op- 
posed to that of M. Taine, or rather I shall abstain from all 
systems, and from all pretensions to literary merit, and con- 
fine myself entirely to facts and to reason. 

The reader will judge whether I shall be able to accom- 
plish this object ; he will see how really unimportant are the 
causes which cast a shade upon the memory of Byron, and 
how careful one should be not to give credit too implicitly 
to the sincerity of that hypocritical praise which several of 
his biographers have bestowed upon him. They have, as it 
were, generally, taken a kind of pleasure in dwelling upon his 
age, his rank, and other extenuating circumstances, as a cover 
to their cens-ure, just as if Byron ever required their foi-give- 
ness. In thus searching into the secrets of his heart, and 
analyzing his life, the reader will soon be obliged to admit, 
that if Byron, in common with others, had a few of the faults 
of youth, he in return had a host of virtues which belonged 
only to hira. In short, if Byron is received in the light in 
which he was esteemed by those who knew him personally, 
he will still constitute one of the finest, most amiable, and 
grandest characters of his century. As for ourselves, in sum- 
ming up" the merits of this very humble, but very conscientious 
work, we can only repeat with delight the beautiful words 
in which Moore sums up his own estimate of Lord Byron's 
worth : " Should the effect of my humble labors be to clear 
away some of those mists that hung round my friend, and 
show hira, in most respects, as worthy of love as he was, in 
all, of admiration, then will the chief and sole aim of this 
work have been accomplished."* 

* Moore, vol. ii. p. 782. 
E 2 



106 Lord Bykon's 



CHAPTER IV. 

LORD BYROn's religious OPINIONS. 

" When the triumph of a cause of such importance to humanity is in question, 

there never can be too manj' advocates But it is not enough to count 

up the votes ; their value must, above all, be weiKheJ." — Siierer. 

The struggles between heart and reason, in religious mat- 
ters, began almost with Lord Byron's infancy. His desire of 
reconciling them was such, that, if unsuccessful, his mind was 
perplexed and restless. He was not, as it were, out of the 
cradle, when, in the midst of his childish play, the great prob- 
lems of life ali'eady filled his youthful thoughts ; and his good 
nurse May, who was wont to sing psalms to him when rocking 
him to sleep, had also to answer questions which showed the 
dangerous curiosity of his mind. 

"Among the traits," says Moore, "which should be re- 
corded of his earlier years, I should mention, that, according 
to the character given of him by his first nurse's husband, he 
was, when a mere child, * particularly inquisitive and puzzling 
about religion.' " 

At ten years of age, he was sent to school, at Dulwich, 
under the care of the Rev. Dr. Glennie, who, in the account 
given by him to Moore, and after speaking of the amiable 
qualities of Byron, adds : that " At that age he already pos- 
sessed an intimate acquaintance with the historical facts in 
the Scriptures, and was particularly delighted when he could 
speak of thera to him, especially on Sunday evenings after 
worship. He was wont then to reason upon all the facts con- 
tained in the Bible, with every appearance of faith in the doc- 
trine which it teaches. 

But while his heart was thus drawn toward its Creator, 
the power of his reason began imperiously to assert its rights. 
As long as he remained sheltered under his father's roof, 
under the eyes of his mother, and of young ecclesiastics who 



Religious Opinions. 107 

were his first teachers, and whose practice agreed with their 
teaching, — as long as his reason had not reached a certain 
degree of development, — he remained orthodox and pious. 
But when he went to college, and particularly when he was 
received at Cambridge, a vast field of contradictions opened 
before his observing and thinking mind. His reflections, to- 
gether with the study of the great psychological questions, 
soon clouded his mind, and threw a shade over his orthodoxy. 
If Lord Byron, therefore, had reaUy the misfortune to lose at 
an earlier age than ordinary children, the simple faith of his 
childhood, the fact is not to be wondered at. By the univer- 
sality of his genius he added to the faculties which form the 
poet, those of an eminently logical and practical mind ; and 
being precocious in all things, he was likewise so in his pow- 
ers of reflection and reasoning. " Never," says Moore, " did 
Lord Byron lose sight of reality and of common practical 
sense ; his genius, however high it soared, ever preserved upon 
earth a support of some kind." 

His intellectual inquisitiveness was likewise, with him, a 
precocious passion, and circumstances stood so well in the 
way to serve this craving, that when fifteen years of age (in- 
credible as it seems), he had already perused two thousand 
volumes, among which his powerful and vivid intellect had 
been able to weigh the contradictions of all the principal 
modern and ancient systems of philosophy. This thirst for 
knowledge (anomalous according to the rules of both school 
and college) was the more extraordinary that it existed in 
him together with a passionate love for boyish play, and the 
indulgence in all the bodily exercises, in which he excelled, 
and on which he prided himself. But as he stored his mind 
after the usual college hours, and apart from the influences of 
that routine discipline, which, with Milton, Pope, and almost 
all the great minds, he so cordially hated, the real progress of 
his intellect remained unobserved by his masters, and even 
by his fellow-students. This mistake, on the part of men lit- 
tle gifted with quickness of perception, was not shared by Dis- 
raeli, who could so justly appreciate genius ; and of Byron he 
spoke as of a studious boy, who loved to hide this quality 
from his comrades, thinking it more amiable on his part to 
appear idle in their eyes. 



108 Lord Byron's • 

While the yoniig man thus strengthened his intellect by- 
hard though irregular study, his meditative and impassioned 
nature, feeling in the highest degree the necessity of confirm- 
ing its impressions, experienced more imperatively than a 
youth of fifteen generally does, the want of examining the 
traditional teachings which had been transmitted to him. 
Byron felt the necessity of inquiring on what irrevocable proofs 
the dogmas which he was called upon to believe were based. 
Holy writ, aided by the infallibility of the teachings of the 
Church, etc., were adduced as the proofs he required. 

He was wont, therefore, to read with avidity a number of 
books treating on religious matters ; and he perused them, 
both with artless ingenuity and in the hope of their strength- 
ening his faith. But, could he truly find faith in their pages ? 
Are not such books rather dangerous than otherwise for some 
minds ? 

" The truth is," says the author of the " Essays," " that a 
mind which has never entertained a doubt in revelation, may 
conceive some doubts by reading books written in its defense." 
And he adds elsewhere, in speaking of the writers of such 
controversial works, that "impatient of the least hesitation, 
they deny with angei- the value of their adversary's arguments, 
and betray, in their way of getting over difticulties, a humor 
which injures the effects of their reasoning, and of the proofs 
they make vise of to help their arguments." After reading 
several of these books, he must have found, as did the great 
Pitt, " that such readings provoke many more doubts than 
they dispel ;" and, in fact, they rather disquieted and shook, 
than strengthened his faith. At the same time, he was alive 
to another striking contradiction. He noticed that the men 
who taught the doctrines, too often forgot to make these and 
their practice agree ; and in losing his respect for his masters, 
he still further doubted the sincerity of their teaching. Thus, 
while remaining religiously inclined, he must have felt his 
faith becoming more and more shaken, and m the memoran- 
dum of his early days, after enumerating the books treating 
upon religious subjects which he had read, he says : " All 
very tedious. I hate books treating of religious subjects ; al- 
though I adore and love God, freed from all absurd and blas- 
phemous notions." 



Religious Opinions. 109 

Tn this state of mind, of M'hich one especially finds a proof 
in his earlier poems, the philosophy of Locke, which is that 
professed at Cambridge, and which he had already skimmed, 
as it were, together with other philosophical systems, became 
his study. It only added an enormous weight in the way of 
contradictions to the already heavy weight of doubt. 

Could it be otherwise ? Does not Locke teach that all 
ideas being the creation of the senses, the notion of God, un- 
less aided by tradition, has no other basis but our senses and 
the sight of the external world ? If this be not the doctrine 
professed by Locke, it is the reading which a logical mind 
may give to it. 

He believes in God ; yet the notion of God, as it appears 
from his philosophical teaching, is not that which is taught 
by Christian doctrine. According to him, God is not even 
proclaimed to be the Creator of the Universe. But even 
were He proclaimed such, what would be the result of this 
philosophical condescension, unless it be that God is distinct 
from the world ? Would God possess then all those attri- 
butes which reason, independently of all philosophy, points 
to in the Divinity ? Would power, goodness, infinite perfec- 
tion be God's? Certainly not: as we are unable to know 
Him except through a world of imperfections, where good 
and evil, order and confusion, arc mixed together, and not 
by the conception of the infinite, which alone can give us a 
true and perfect idea of God, it follows that God would be 
much superior to the world, but would not be absolute per- 
fection. 

After this depreciation of the Omnipotent, what says this 
philosophy of our soul ? It does away altogether Avitli one 
of the essential proofs of its spiritiial nature, and thereby 
compromises the soul itself, declaring as it does, that " it is 
not unUkely that matter is capable of thought." But then of 
what necessity would the soul be, if the body can think ? 
IIow hope for immortality, if that which thinks is subject to 
dissolution and to death ? • 

As for our liberty, it would be annihilated as a consequence 
of such docti'ines ; for it is not supposed to derive its es- 
sence from the interior activity of the soul, but would seem 
to be limited to our power of moving. Yet we are hourly 



110" Lord Byron's 

experiencing what our weakness is in comparison with the 
power of the laws of nature, which rule us in every sense and 
way. In making, therefore, all things derivable from sensa- 
tions, Locke fell from one error into another, and nearly 
arrived at that point when duty and all principles of justice 
and morality might be altogether denied. Being himself, 
however, both good, honest, liberal, and Christian-minded, he 
could only save himself from the social wreck to which he ex- 
posed others, by stopping on the brink of the abyss which he 
had himself created, and by becoming in practice inconsistent 
with his speculative notions. His successors, such as Condil- 
lac and Cabanis, fell by following his system and by carrying 
it too far. 

A doctrine which denies the right of discovering, or of ex- 
plaining the religious truths which are the grounds of all 
moral teaching, and which allows tradition the privilege only 
of bestowing faith ; a system of metaphysics, which can not 
avoid the dangers in which morality must perish, owing to 
its contradictions and its inconsistencies, must be perilous for 
all but those happily constituted minds for whom simple faith 
and submission are a part of their essence, who believe on 
hearsay and seek not to understand, but merely glance at the 
surface of the difficult and venturesome questions Avhich are 
discussed before them, either because they feel their weak- 
ness, or because the light of revelation shines upon them so 
strongly as to make that of reason pale. For more logical 
minds, howevei', for such who are inquisitive, whose reason is 
both anxious and exacting, who want to understand before 
they believe, for whom the ties which linked them to tradition 
have been loosened, owing to their having reflected on a num- 
ber of contradictions (the least of which, in the case of Lord 
Byron, was decidedly not that of seeing such a philosophy 
professed and adopted in a clerical university) ; for minds 
like these such doctrines must necessarily lead to atheism. 
Though Lord Byron's mind was one of these, he escaped the 
fearfti results by a still greater effort of his reason, which 
made him reject the precepts of the sensualists, and compre- 
hend their inconsistencies. 

His protest against the doctrines of the sensualists is en- 
tered in his memorandum, where, after naming all the authors 



Religious Opinions. Ill 

of the philosophical systems which he had read, and, coming 

to the head of that school, he exclaims from the bottom of his 

heart : 

"Hobbes! I detest him !" 

And notwithstanding the respect with which the good and 
great Locke must individually have inspired him, he evidently 
must have repudiated his precejDts, inasmuch as they were not 
strong enough to laproot from his mind the religious truths 
which reason proclaims, nor prevent either his coming out of 
his philosophical struggle a firm believer in all the dogmas 
which are imperiously upheld to the hjiman reason, or his pro- 
claiming his belief in one God and Creator, in our free will, 
and in the immortality of the soul. 

This glorious and noble victory of his mind and true relig- 
ious tendencies at that time, is evinced in his " Prayer to Na- 
ture," written when he had not yet reached his eighteenth 
year. In this beautiful prayer, which his so-called orthodox 
friends succeeded in having cut out of the volume containing 
his earliest poems, we find both great power of contemplation 
and humility and confidence in prayer — a soul too near the 
Creator to doubt of His Omnipotence, but also too far from 
Him for his faith and confidence in the divine mercy not to be 
mixed up with a little fear ; in fact, all the essential elements 
of a noble prayer which is not orthodox. Though written on 
the threshold of life, he might, Avith few modifications, have 
signed it on the eve of his death ; when, still young, fate had 
spared him nothing, from the sweetest to the bitterest feelings, 
from every deserved pleasure to every undesei'ved pain. 

THE PRAYER OF NATURE. 

Father of Light ! great God of Heaven ! 

Hear'st thou the accents of despair? 
Can guilt like man's be e'er forgiven ? 

Can vice atone for crimes by praj'er? 

Father of Light, on thee I call ! 

Thou seest my soul is dark within ; 
Thou who canst mark the sparrow's fall, 
Avert from me the death of sin. 

No shrine I seek, to sects unknown ; 

Oh, point to me the path of truth ! 
Thy dread omnipotence I own ; 

Spare, yet amend, the faults of youth. 



112 Lord Byron's 

Let bigots rear a gloom}' fane, 
Let superstition hail the pile, 

Let priests, to spread their sable reign. 
With tales of mystic rites beguile. 

Shall man confine his Maker's sway- 
To Gothic domes of mouldering stone? 

Thy temple is the face of day ; 

Earth, ocean, heaven, thy boundless throne. 

Shall man condemn his race to hell, 
Unless they bend in pompous form ? 

Tell us that all, for one who fell. 

Must perish in the mingling storm ? 

Shall each pretend to reach the skies. 
Yet doom his brother to expire. 

Whose soul a different hope supplies. 
Or doctrines less severe inspire? 

Shall these, by creeds they can't expound, 
Prepare a fancied bliss or woe ? 

Shall reptiles, grovelling on the ground, 
Their great Creator's purpose know ? 

Shall those who live for self alone, 

Whose years float on in daily crime — 

Shall they by faith for guilt atone, 

And live beyond the bounds of Time ? 

Father! no pi'ophet's laws I seek, — 

Thij laws in Nature's works appear;— 

I own myself corrupt and weak, 

Yet will I pray, for thou wilt hear ! 

Thou, who canst guide the wandering star 
Through trackless realms of aether's space ; 

Who calm'st the elemental war. 

Whose hand from pole to pole I trace : 

Thou, who in wisdom placed me here. 

Who, when thou wilt, canst take me hence. 

Ah! while I tread this earthly sphere, 
Extend to me thy wide defense. 

To Thee, my God, to thee I call ! 

Whatever weal or woe betide, 
By thy command I rise or fall, 

In thy protection I confide. 

If, when this dust to dust's restored, 
My soul shall float on airj' wing. 

How shall thy glorious name adored 
Inspire her feeble voice to sing ! 

But, if this fleeting spirit share 

With clay the grave's eternal bed. 

While life yet throbs I raise my pi-ayer. 

Though doom'd no more to quit the dead. 



liELiGious Opinions. 118 

To Thee I breathe my humble strain, 

Grateful for all th}' mercies past, 
And hope, my God, to thee again 

This erring life may fly at last. 

December 2'J, 1S06. [First published, 1830.] 

As much may be said of another poem which he Hkewise Avrote 
in his youth ; when, very dangerously ill, and believing his 
last end to be near, he turned all his thoughts to the other 
world, and conceived the touching poem which ended in the 
lines : — 

"Forget this world, my restless sprite; 
Turn, turn thy thoughts to Heaven ; 
There must thou soon direct thy flight 
If errors are forgiven." 

But if Lord Byron did not adopt Locke's philosophy he at 
least paid the greatest tribute of regard to his goodness by 
following ever more closely his best precept, which is to the 
effect that to love truth for the sake of truth is an essential 
part of liuman perfection in this world, and the fertile soil on 
which is sown the seed of every virtue. 

While his mind thus wavered between a thousand contra- 
dictory opinions, and, finding part of the truth only in every 
philosophical system which he examined, but not the whole 
truth — which was what his soul thirsted for ; calling himself 
at times skeptic, because he hesitated in adhering to one 
school, in consequence of the numerous errors and inconsis- 
tencies common to all (the great school which has, to the hon- 
or of France, harmonized them all, was not yet open) ; but not 
losing sight of the great eternal truths of which he felt in- 
wardly the proofs, he made the acquaintance of a young man 
who had just completed his university education with great 
success. This young man, who exercised a great influence 
over all his fellow-students, owing to his superior intellect, 
influenced Byron in a similar manner. Bold, logical, inflexi- 
ble, he was not swayed by the dangers which the senSualistic 
teaching presented to all logical minds; dangers which had 
frightened the chief of that school himself, and who, in wish- 
ing to oppose them, had not been able to do so except by 
contradictions. This young man, by a noble inconsistency, 
drew back in presence of the moral conclusions of that meta- 
physical doctrine, but not without culling from the master's 



114 Lord Byron's 

thoughts conclusions, such that they leave all that is spiritual 
and immortal without defense, together with all the legitimate 
inferences to be derived from the principles he taught, how- 
ever impious or absurd. 

Among the Germans he had likewise met with several bold 
doctrines ; but, merely to speak here of the conclusions to 
which the school he belonged necessarily brought him, he ar- 
rived at those conclusions by a series of deductions from the 
study of those great questions, whi^jh experience always ends 
by referring either to reason or to revelation. Compelled by 
the tenets of that school, to solve all these problems by means 
of the sensations only, he was naturally led to the conclusion 
that no such thing existed as the sj^irituality of the soul, and 
hence, that it had neither the gift of immortality nor that of 
liberty, nor any principles of moralit3\ Finally, obliged to 
seek in tradition the conviction that a God existed, and that 
He can only be perceived through a maze of imperfections, 
and not as reason conceives Him clearly and simply with all 
His necessary attributes of perfection, he was even led to the 
necessity of losing sight of a Creator altogether. 

The fatal precipice, which this young student himself avoid- 
ed by the practical conclusions by which he abided, Byron 
likewise escaped both by his conchisions and his theoretical 
notions. He even hated the name of atheist to that degree, 
that at Harrow he wished to fight his companion Lord Al- 
thorpe, because he had written the word atheist under Byron's 
name. This is so true that Sir Robert Dallas, of whose judg- 
ment no interpretation can ever be given Avithout making 
allowances for the intolerant spirit and the exaggeration re- 
quired by his notions of othodoxy and by his party prejudices, 
after regretting that Lord Byron should not have had a shield 
during his minority to protect him against his comrades, 
" proud, free-thinking, and acute sophists," as he calls them, 
adds that, if surprise must be expressed, it is not that Byron 
should have erred, but that he should have pierced the clouds 
which surrounded him, and have dispersed them by the sole 
rays of his genius. 

So many struggles, however, so many contradictions, so 
many strains upon the mind, while leaving his heart untouch- 
ed, could not but multiply the doubts which he conceived, 



Keligious Opinions. 115 

and more or less modify his mind, and even give to it a tinge 
of skepticism. 

When he left England for the first time, his mind was in 
this transitory, suffering state. The various countries which 
he visited, the various creeds with which he became acquaint- 
ed, the intolerance of the one, the laxity in others in direct 
opposition to their superstitious and irrational practices ; the 
truly touching piety which he found in the Greek monasteries 
(at Zytza and at Athens), in the midst of which and in the 
silence of whose cloisters, he loved to share the i^eace and 
even the austerities of a monkish life ; his transition from the 
Western coitntries, where reason is placed above imagination, 
to the East, where the opposite is aimed at — all contributed 
to prevent what was vacillating in his mind from becoming 
settled. Meanwhile endless disappointments, bitter sorrows, 
and broken illusions contributed their share to the pain which 
his mind expei'ienced at every stage of its philosophical in- 
quiry, and contributed to give him, in the loneliness of his 
life, a tinge of misanthropy opposed to his natural character, 
which suggested the rather philosophical and generous than 
prudent conception of " Childe Harold's Pilgrimage," where 
he depicts his hero as intellectually imbued with philosoph- 
ical doctrines which lead practical minds to skepticism and 
materialism ! These doctrines resulted in causing " Childe 
Harold" to lose that traditional faith which gives peace to 
the soul by insuring conviction to the mind. The poet shows 
the impossibility of withdrawing himself from their disastrous 
results when arrived at the age when passions assert their 
rule, and when in a certain social position, they must be car- 
ried into practice. Nature not having gifted him with a suf- 
ficiently generous heart to check the disease of his mind, 
Childe Harold, disgusted with the sins of his youth, no longer 
seeks the road to virtue, but begins to experience with Solo- 
mon the vanity of human things, becomes a prey to satiety, 
ennui, and to insensiblity to both physical and moral worth. 

Byron, who made the intellectual education of his day re- 
sponsible for Childe Harold's faults, had conceived this char- 
acter in his earliest days at Harrow. It was in any case, he 
said, a characteristic of the youth of those days, although 
idealized and drawn from his own imagination. His enemies 



116 Lord Byron's 

and his rivals have endeavored to j^rove that he wished to 
describe in this poem the state of his own mind. They made 
capital out of a few historical and local circumstances, to give 
to their falsehood some appearance of truth. But only those 
who did not know him personally could be ignorant how im- 
probable it was that any resemblance between the poet and 
his hero could be maintained. 

Let us confine ourselves to the remark that Lord Byron, 
instead of personifying his hero, personifies no one but simply 
the poet. Let us add, besides, that in no case could Lord Byron 
be made responsible for the consequences of the doctrines of 
the materialists, as held by his hero. Not only because of his 
nature, which was totally opposed to them, but also and es- 
pecially because of his tendencies, which were eminently and 
persistently those of a spiritualist, and which clung to him 
throughout his life even at the time when he was accused of 
skepticism. This was at the time when he wrote the second 
canto of " Childe Harold." Thoughts, little in unison with, if 
not entirely opposed to his intimate convictions, sprang from 
his sick heart to his head: his soul became dejected, and his 
copious tears so obscured his eyes as to veil from them for a 
time the existence of the Almighty, which he seemed to ques- 
tion ; and he appeared to think that if the Cambridge philoso- 
phy was right in doubting the soul's spirituality, its immor- 
tality might be equally questioned. These doubts having 
been expressed in his own, and not in his hero's name, at the 
outset of the second canto of " Childe Harold," led to his be- 
ing also accused of skepticism. 

But if pain actually paralyzed for a time the elasticity of 
his mind, the latter very soon recovered its natural vigor and 
showed itself in all its glowing energy in the eighth and ninth 
stanzas, which are most delicate emanations from a beautiful 
soul. The first stanzas alone, however, continued to occupy 
the attention of some orthodox and over-scrupulous minds : 
poetry not necessarily being a mode of teaching philosophy. 
We must besides remark that the meaning of the lines is purely 
hypothetical. In saying that the soul might not he immortal, 
is it not saying much the same as was said by Locke in the 
words the soul is perhaps spiritual? Is not that perishable 
which is capable of dissolution according to the laws of the 



Religious Opinions. 117 

world ? Lord Byron, though a stanch spiritualist at heart, 
derived his doubts from other much less exalted authorities. 
Believing implicitly in the omnipotence of the Creator, could 
he not modestly fear that God, who had made his soul out of 
nothing, might cause it to return to nothing? Might he not 
imagine that the contrary belief was rather the result of our 
wishes, of our pride, and of the importance which we love to 
attach to ourselves ? Can the conviction of the existence of 
immortality, unless founded upon revelation, be any thing else 
but a hope or a sentiment ? Pantheists alone find immortal- 
ity to be the fatal consequence of their presumptuous doctrine. 
But what an immortality ! One to be laughed at, as a philoso- 
pher of our days so well expresses it. 

Accused of skepticism, Byron replied by explaining the 
meaning of his lines in a note which, at the instance of Mr. 
Dallas, he also consented to suppress with his habitual good- 
nature, and in which he endeavored to show that the spirit 
which pervaded the whole of the poem was rather one of dis- 
couragement and despair, than raillery at religion, and that, 
after all, the effect of religion upon the world had been less 
to make men love their equals than to excite the various sects 
to a hatred against one another, and thus give rise to those 
fanatical wars which have caused so much bloodshed and in- 
jured so deeply the cause which they were intended to defend. 

In reading this note again, one can with difficulty make 
out what Dallas's objections were, and why he tried so hard 
to have it suppressed ; for it savors much moi^e of a spirit of 
toleration and charity than of skepticism. Lord Byron nev- 
ertheless withdrew it. 

But this was not enough to satisfy the British straight- 
lacedness. As the accusations against his skepticism were on 
the increase daily, Mr. Gift'ord, for whose enlightened opinion 
Byron ever had great respect, advised him to be more pru- 
dent, whereupon Byi-on replied : — 

"I will do as you advise in regard to religious matters. 
The best would perhaps be to avoid them altogether. Cer- 
tainly the passages already published are rather tQO rigorous- 
ly intei-preted. I am no bigot of incredulity, and I did not 
expect that I should be accused of denying the existence of 
God, because I had expressed some doubts as to the immor- 



118 Lord Byron's 

tality of the soul After all, I believe my doubts to be 

but the effects of some mental illness." 

It is clear from this letter, the tone of which is so honest 
and sincere, that if in the stanzas which his rivals blamed there 
was really more skepticism than can be gathered from the 
consideration of man's littleness and God's greatness, yet it 
was not his real conviction. Perhaps it was only a kind of 
cloud overhanging the mind, produced by the great grief 
which weighed on his heart. These sentiments, however, must 
have been really his own for some time longer. In his jour- 
nal of 1813 he expresses himself thus: — 

"My restlessness tells me I have something within that 
' passeth show.' It is for him who made it to prolong that 
spark of celestial fire which illuminates yet burns this frail 

tenement In the mean time I am grateful for some 

good, and tolerably patient under certain evils, grace d Dieu et 
d mon hon temperament!''' 

But all this, as we have said, amounted to the opinion that 
an omnipotent God is the author of our soul, which is of 
a totally different nature to that of our body, and that the 
soul being spiritual and not subjected to the laws which rule 
the body, the soul ^lust be immortal. That he who made 
it out of nothing can cause it to return to nothing. The or- 
thodox docti'ine does not teach, as pantheism does, that our 
soul can not perish. It gives it only an individual immor- 
tality. 

Notwithstanding this, and indeed on account of it, he was 
accused of being an atheist, in a poem entitled " Anti-Byron." 
This poem was the work of a clever rival, who made himself 
the echo of a party. Murray hesitated to publish it, but By- 
ron, who was always just, praised the poem, and advised its 
publication. 

" If the author thinks that I have written poetry with such 
tendencies, he is quite right to contradict it." 

But having done so much for others, this time, at least, he 
fulfilled a duty toward himself by adding : — 

" The author is however wrong on one point ; I am not in 
the least an atheist ;" and ends by saying, " It is very odd ; 
eight lines may have produced eight thousand, if we calculate 
what has been anrl mav still be said on the subject." 



Eeligious Opinions. 119 

He speaks of the same work to Moore, in the same tone of 
pleasantry : — 

" Oh, by-the-by, I had nearly forgot. There is a long poem 
— an 'Anti-Byron' — coming out, to prove that I have formed 
a conspiracy to overthrow by rhyme all religion and govern- 
ment, and have already made great progress ! It is not very 
scurrilous, but serious and ethereal. I never felt myself im- 
portant till I saw and heard of my being such a little Voltaire 
as to induce such a production." 

He therefore laughed at these accusations as too absurd. 
As for skepticism, he did not defend himself from a touch of 
it ; for not only did he feel that the suspicious stanza could 
partly justify the belief, but also because there did exist in 
him a kind of religious skepticism which proceeded far more 
from meditation and observation than from a passion for it. 
Such a skepticism is in truth a sigh for conviction. A painful 
vision which appears to most reflective minds in a more or less 
indistinct and vague manner, but which appeared more forci- 
bly to him, inasmuch as it sought to be expressed in words. 

" He," says Montaigne, " who analyzes all the circumstances 
which have brought about matters, and all the consequences 
which have been derived from them, debars himself from hav- 
ing any choice, and remains skeptical." 

This skepticism of Lord Byron, however, did not overstep 
the boundai'ies of permissible doubt, as prescribed by an in- 
telligence desirous of improvement. This privilege he exer- 
cised ; and one might say that he remained, as it were, sus- 
pended between heaven and earth, ever looking up toward 
heaven, from whence he felt that light must come in the end, 
— a light ever on the increase, which woixld daily steady him 
in the great principles Avhich form the fundamental basis of 
truth, — one God the creator, the real immortality of our soul, 
our liberty and our responsibility before God. 

Tired, however, of ever being the butt of the invectives of 
his enemies, and of the clei'gy, whom he had roughly handled 
in his writings. Lord Byron preferred remaining silent ; and 
until his arrival in Switzerland he ceased making any allusions 
in his writings to any philosophical doubts which he may have 
entertained. The heroes which he selected for his Oriental 
poems were, moreover, too passionate to allow the mysterious 



120 Lord Byron's 

voices from heaven to silence the cries from their heart. 
These celestial warnings, however, Byron never ceased to 
hear, although absorbed himself by various passions of a dif- 
ferent kind ; he was at that time almost surrounded by an 
idolizing public, and rocked in the cradle of success and popu- 
larity. This is but too visible whenever he ceases to talk the 
language of his heroes, and expresses merely his own ideas 
and his own personal feelings. It was at this time that he 
wrote those delicious " Hebrew Melodies," in which a belief in 
spirituality and immortality is everywhere manifest, and in 
which is to be found the moral indication, if not the metaphys- 
ical proof, of the working of his mind in a religious point of 
view, as he matured in years. Two of these Melodies especial- 
ly, the third and the fifteenth, contain so positive a profession 
of faith in the spiritualist doctrines, and carry with them the 
mark of so elevated a Christian sentiment, that I can not for- 
bear quoting them in extenso. 

IF THAT HIGH WORLD, 



If that high world, which lies beyond 

Our own, surviving Love endears ; 
If there the cherish'd heart be fond, 

The eye the same, except in tears — 
How welcome those untrodden spheres I 

How sweet this verj' hour to die ! 
To soar from earth and find all fears 

Lost in thy light — Eternity ! 



It must be so : 'tis not for self 

That we so tremble on the brink ; 
And striving to o'erleap the gulf. 

Yet cling to Being's severing link. 
Oh ! in that future let us think 

To hold each heart the heart that shares; 
With them the immortal waters drink, 

And soul in soul grow deathless theirs ! 



WHEN COLDNESS WRAPS THIS SUFFERING CLAY. 



When coldness wraps this suflering clay, 
Ah! whither strays the immortal mind? 

It can not die, it can not ?tay, 

But leaves its darken'd dust behind. 



Religious Opinions. 121 

Tiien, unembodicd, doth it trace 

By steps each i)lanet's heavenly way? 

Or till at once the realms of space, 
A thing of eyes, that all survey? 

II. 
Eternal, boundless, undecay'd, 

A thought unseen, but seeing all. 
All, all in earth or skies display'd. 

Shall it survey, shall it recall: 
Each fainter trace that memory holds 

So darkl}' of departed years. 
In one broad glance the soul beholds. 

And all, that was, at once appears 

III. 
Before Creation peopled earth. 

Its eyes shall roll through chaos back ; 
And where the furthest lieaven had birth. 

The spirit trace its rising track. 
And where the future mars or makes. 

Its glance cMlate o'er all to be. 
While sun is quench'd or system break?, 

Fix'd in his own eternity. 

IV. 

Above our Love, Hope, Hate, or Fear, 

It lives all passionless and pure : 
An ai;e shall fleet like earthly year; 

Its years as moments shall endure. 
Away, away, without a wing. 

O'er all, through all, its thought shall fly, 
A nameless and eternal thing, 

Forgetting what it was to die. 

There is no passage in Plato, or in St. Angustin, or in Pas- 
cal, which can equal the sublimity of these stanzas. 

It was in this painful state of mind that he spent the un- 
fortunate year of his marriage. Having separated from his 
wife, he came to Geneva. Here, at the same hotel — Hotel de 
Secheron — Shelley had also arrived, who some years previous- 
ly had offered Byron a copy of his poem entitled " Queen 
Mab." Here they became acquainted. Although only twen- 
ty-three years of age, Shelley had already experienced much 
sorrow during his short existence. Bom of rich and aristo- 
cratic parents, and who professed very religious and Tory 
principles, Shelley had been sent to Eton at thirteen. His 
character was most peculiar. He had none of the tastes of 
the young, could not stand scholastic disciphne, despised ev- 
ery rule and regulation, and spent his time in writing novels. 

F 



122 Lord Byron's 

He published two when fifteen years old only, which appear- 
ed to be far above what could be exj^ected from a boy of his 
age, but which deserved censure from, their immoral tone. 
Owing to the nature of his mind, and especially at a time when 
reading has much influence, Shelley had conceived a great 
taste for the books which were disapproved of at college. 
Consequently the doctrines of the materialist school, which 
were the most in fashion then both in France and in England, 
eo poisoned his mind as to cause him to become an atheist, 
and to argue as such against several theologians. He even 
published a pamphlet, so exaggerated in tone that he entitled 
it, " On the Necessity of Atheism." To crown this folly, 
Shelley sent round to all the bishops a. cojjy of this work, and 
signed it with his own name. 

Brought before the authorities to answer the charge of 
this audacious act, he persisted in "his doctrines, and was actu- 
ally preparing an answer to the judges in the same sense, 
when he was expelled from the university. 

For people who know England a little,, it is easy to conceive 
what an impression such conduct must have produced on. the 
part of the eldest son of a family like his, of 'Tory principles, 
belonging to the aristocracy, intimate with the prince regent, 
and stanch, orthodox and severe in their religious tenets. Ex- 
pelled from college, he was likewise sent away from home ; 
and when his indignant father consented to see him again, 
Shelley was treated with such coldness that he was enraged 
at being received as a stranger in the bosom of a family of 
which he was the eldest son. This was not all : even the 
young lady for whom Shelley had already conceived an affec- 
tion, deemed it right to cast him off. Overwhelmed by all 
these but too well merited misfortimes, he took refuge in an 
inn, where he tried to poison himself. 

As he was sti'uggling between life and death, a young girl 
of fifteen. Miss Westbrook, took cai-e of him. Believing him- 
self to be past recovery, and having no other means of reward- 
ing her attention except by marrying her, he did so, in the 
hope that after his death his family would provide for her. 
But it is not always so easy to die, and he did not die. His 
health, however, was completely broken, and all that remained 
to him besides was an ill-assorted marriage. After the Gretna 



Eeligious Opinions. 123 

Green ceremony, Shelley went to reside in Edinburgh. His 
marriage so exasperated his father, that from that time he 
ceased to have any intercourse with him. 

From Scotland Shelley went to Ireland, which was then in 
a very disturbed state. His metaphysics led him to conceive 
the most dangerous social theories. Conquered by a very 
real love of humanity, which he hoped to serve by the reali- 
zation of his chimerical views, he even believed it to be his 
duty to make proselytes. While recommending the observ- 
ance of peace, and of a spirit of moderation on the one hand, 
he, on the other, published pamphlets and spoke at meetings 
with a degree of talent which earned for him a certain amount 
of reputation, if not of fame. Then he was seized with a vi- 
olent admiration for the English school called " Lockists," and 
devoted himself to poetry by way of giving a literarj^ expres- 
sion to his metaphysical reveries, and to his social theories. 
Thus he wrote " Queen Mab," a poem full of talent and im- 
agination, but which is only the frame which encircles his 
most deplorable fancies. He sent a copy of it to all the noted 
literary men of England, and among them to Lord Byron, 
whose star had risen since the publication of " Childe Harold." 
Lord Byron declared, as may be seen in a note to the " Due 
Foscari," that the metaphysical portion of the poem was quite 
in opposition with his own opinions ; but, with his usual impar- 
tiality and justice, he admired the poetry which is noticeable 
in this work, agreeing in this " with all those who are not blind- 
ed by bigotry and baseness of mind." 

Shelley's marriage, contracted as it was under such strange 
auspices, was, of course, very unfortunate. By his acquaint- 
ance with Godwin, one of the greatest literary characters of 
his day, Shelley came to know Mary, his daughter, by his mar- 
riage with the celebrated Mrs. Woolstoncraft. Each fell in 
love with the other, but Shelley was not yet free to marry 
Miss Godwin. He separated from the wife he had chosen only 
from grateful motives, although he had two children by her, 
and he left England for the first time, where he had become 
the object of persecutions of all kinds, and of a hatred which 
at a later period culminated in taking away his right to the 
guardianship of his children. 

Such was his position when Lord Byron arrived in Switzer- 



124 Lord Byron's 

land, aud alighted at the Hotel Secheron. To make acquaint- 
ance, therefore, with the author of " Queen Mab," and Avith the 
daughter of Godwin, for whom he entertained great regard, was 
a natural consequence on the part of the author of " Childe 
Harold." 

Notwithstanding their difference of character, their diver- 
sity of taste, and their different habits, owing to the very op- 
posite mode of living which they had followed, the two poets 
felt drawn to one another by that irresistible sympathy which 
springs up in the souls of two persecuted beings, however just 
that persecution may have been, as regards Shelley, but w^hich 
was wholly unjust as regards Byron. Here we must allow 
Moore to speak : — 

" The conversation of Shelley, from the extent of his poetic 
reading, and the strange, mystic speculations into which his 
systems of philosophy led him, was of a nature strongly to in- 
terest the attention of Lord Byron, and to turn him away from 
worldly associations and topics into more abstract aud untrod- 
den ways of thought. As far as contrast indeed is an enliv- 
ening ingredient of such intercourse, it would be difficult to 
find two persons more formed to whet each other's faculties 
by discussion, as on few points of common interest between 
them did their opinions agree: and that this difference had 
its root deep in the conformation of their respective minds, 
needs but a glance through the rich, glittering labyrinth of 
Shelley's pages to assure us. 

" In Lord Byron, the real was never forgotten in the fanci- 
ful. However Imagination had placed her whole realm at his 
disposal, he was no less a man of this woi'ld than a ruler of 
hers : and, accordingly, through the airiest and most subtle 
creations of his brain, still the life-blood of truth and i-eality 
circulates. With Shelley it was far otherwise : his fancy was 
the medium through which he saw all things, his facts as well 
as his theories ; and not only the greater part of his poetry, 
but the political and philosophical speculations in which he 
indulged, were all distilled through the same over-refining and 
unrealizing alembic. Having started as a teacher and reform- 
er of the world, at an age when he could know nothing of the 
world but from fancy, the persecution he met with on the 
threshold of this boyish enterprise only confirmed him in his 



Religious Opinions. 125 

first paradoxical views of human ills, and their remedies. In- 
stead of waiting to take lessons from those of greater experi- 
ence, he with a courage, admirable, had it been but wisely di- 
rected, made war upon both. . . , With a mind, by nature, 
fervidly pious, he yet refused to acknowledge a Supreme Prov- 
idence, and substituted some airy abstraction of ' Universal 
Love ' in its place. An aristocrat by birth, and, as I under- 
stand, also in appearance and manners, he was yet a leveller in 
politics, and to such an Utopian extent as to be the serious ad- 
vocate of a community of goods. Though benevolent and 
generous to an extent that seemed to exclude all idea of self- 
ishness, he yet scrupled not, in the pride of system, to disturb 
wantonly the faith of his fellow-men, and, without substituting 
any equivalent good in its place, to rob the wretched of a hope, 
which, even if false, would be better than all this world's best 
truths. 

" Upon no point were the opposite tendencies of the two 
friends more observable than in their notions on philosophical 
subjects : Lord Byron being, with the great bulk of mankind, 
a believer in the existence of matter and evil, while Shelley 
so far refined upon the theory of Berkeley, as not only to re- 
solve the whole of creation into spirit, but to add also to this 
immaterial system, some pervading principle, some abstract 
nonentity of love and beauty — of which, as a substitute at least 
for Deity — the philosophic bishop had never dreamed." 

The difference existing between their philosophical doc- 
trines was that which existed between the two most oj^posed 
systems of spiritualism and pantheism. 

I said that Shelley, notwithstanding his originality of mind, 
was destined, through the mobility of his impressions, to be 
easily influenced by what' he read. The study of Plato and 
of Spinoza had already given to his metaphysical views a dif- 
ferent bent. But before his transition from atheism to a mys- 
tical pantheism, before finding God in all things, after having 
sought him in vain everywhere, before considering himself to 
be a fragment of a chosen existence, and before shutting him- 
self up in a kind of mysticism which did actually absorb him 
at a later period, he confined himself to a positive worship of 
nature, which appeared to him then in the glorious shape of 
the mountains and lakes of Helvetia. Wordsworth was his or- 



126 LoKD Byron's 

acle, and thus cultivating a poetry which deified nature, Shel- 
ley, in reality, remained at heart an atheist, and doubtless tried 
to imbue Byron with his enthusiasm and with his opinions. 

Himself greatly delighted with the beauties of the scenery 
in the midst of which they lived, and, as he was wont to say 
in laughter, having received many large doses of Wordsworth 
from Shelley, Lord Byron wrote several stanzas in which the 
same enthusiasm may be met with, recorded in terms almost 
of adoration. 

It was only a poetical form, however, a poetical illusion, 
Avhich was succeeded by stanzas in which God himself as our 
creator, was loudly proclaimed. If in the seventy-second and 
following stanzas of the third canto, opinions were expressed 
which savored of pantheistic tendencies, they were at once 
followed by some such as these : — 

" All heaven and earth are still — though not in sleep, 
But breathless, as we grow when feeling most ; 
And silent, as we stand in thought too deep: — 
All heaven and earth are still : from the high host 
Of stars to the lull'd lake and mountain-coast, 
All is concentred in a life intense. 
Where not a beam, nor air, nor leaf is lost, 
But hath a part of being, and a sense 
Of that which is of all Creator and Defense." 

And again, on viewing the Alps, he writes the poem of " Man- 
fi'ed," in which his belief in a One God, and Creator, is ex- 
pressed in sublime lines. His repugnance to atheism and to 
materialism is testified not only in his poetry, but also by his 
own actions. I 

On reaching Montauvert with his friend Hobhouse, and on 
the point of ascending Mont Blanc with him, he found Shel- 
ley's name in the register of the travellers, and under it the 
qualification of "atheist" written in Shelley's own hand. 
Lord Byron at once scratched it out. But on reading, a little 
below, a remark by another traveller, who had justly rebuked 
Shelley's folly, Byron added the words, " The appellation is 
well deserved." 

He soon after left the Alps, and came to Italy, without 
his views, either philosophical or religious, being in the least 
altered by the seductions of "that serpent," as he jokingly 
denominated Shelley. 



Religious Opinions, 127 

We shall now follow him, step by step, until the end of his 
life, and we shall see whether he wiU not show himself stanch 
in his adherence to great princijiles. Lord Byron had enough 
of systems, and was disgusted with their absurdity, their 
proud dogmatical views, and their intolerant spirit. When- 
ever the great questions of life and the dictates of the soul 
occupy his thoughts, either in the silence of the night or in 
the absence of passion, we shall see him set himself resolutely 
to the examination of his own conscience, for the purpose of 
arriving at truth and justice. The answers which his power- 
ful reasoning suggested to him served to determine and con- 
firm his faith in God. 

.On leaving Geneva, Lord Byron proceeded to Milan. " One 
day," says Mr. Stendhall, who knew Lord Byron at Milan, in 
1817, and saw a great deal of him there, "some jDcople al- 
luded to a couplet from the 'Aminta ' of Tasso, in which the 
poet appears to take credit to himself for being an unbeliever, 
and expresses it in the lines which may thus be translated : — 

' Listen, oh my son, to the thunder as it rolls. 
But what is it to us what Jupiter does up there? 
Let us rejoice down here if betroubled above ; 
Let the common herd of mortals dread his blows : 
And let the world go to ruin, I will only think 
Of what pleases me ; and if I become dust again, 
I shall only be what I have already been.' 

Lord Byron says that these lines were written under the in- 
fluence of spleen, A belief in the existence of a superior 
Being was a necessity for the fiery and tender nature of Tasso. 
He was, besides, far too Platonic to try to reconcile such con- 
trary opinions. When he wrote those lines, he probably was 
in want of a piece of bread and a mistress." 

Lord Byron reached Venice, and there his most agreeable 
hours and days were spent with Padre Pasquale, in the con- 
vent of the Armenian priests. 

He also wrote, at this time, the sublimely moral poem en- 
titled " Manfred," in which he renders justice to the existence 
of God, to the free will of man, the abuse of which has result- 
ed in the loss of " Manfred," and retraces, in splendid lines, 
all the duties incumbent upon man, together with the limits 
which he is not allowed to pass. The apparition of his lovely 
and young victim, the uncertainty of her happiness, which 



128 Lord Byron's 

causes Manfred's greatest grief, and finally his supplication to 
her that lie may know whether slie is enjoying eternal bliss, 

"That I do bear 

This punishment for both — tliat thou wilt be 
One of the blessed — " 

the whole bears the impress of a truly religious spirit. 

He shortly afterward visited Rome, and finding himself in 
presence of St. Peter's, he again gave expression to his re- 
ligious sentiments, in the admirable fourth canto of " Childe 
Harold," which Englishmen do not hesitate to acknowledge 
as the finest poem which ever came from mortal hands. 

TO ST. PETER. 

Stanza 153. 

* * * * * * 

" Christ's mighty shrine above his martyr's tomb ! " 
Stanza 154. 

" But thou, of temples old, or altars new, 
Standest alone, with nothing like to thee. 

* ***** 

Power, glor}', strength, and beauty all are aisled 
In this eternal ark of worship undeliled." 

From Venice he went on to Ravenna. The persecution to 
which he was subjected, on the ground of religion and moral- 
ity, on account of the publication of the two first cantos of 
"Don Juan," was then at its height, and he was tormented in 
every possible way. It was useless for him to protest, in 
verse, in prose, by letter, or by words, against the accusation 
of his being an atheist and a skeptic. It was asserted that 
"Manfred" Avas the expression of his doubts upon the dis- 
pensation of Providence, and that his other poems, all more or 
less imbued with passion, had tendencies of an irreverent na- 
ture in respect to the Divinity. His two famous stanzas in 
" Childe Harold " were always held up to him by the innu- 
merable army of hypocrites and wicked people who assailed 
him. 

All were not hypocrites, however ; some were his enemies 
in good faith, but were blinded by sectarian prejudices. 
Among these was an Irishman of the name of Mulock, author 
of a work entitled " Atheism Answered." Lord Byron one 
day at Ravenna received a paper from the editor of the " Bo- 



Keligious Opinions. 129 

logna Telegraph," with extracts from this work, in which 
" there is a long eulogium of " his " poetry, and a great com- 
patimento for " his " misery " on account of his being a skep- 
tic and an unbehever in Christ ; " although," says Mr. Mulock, 
" his bold skepticism is far preferable to the pharisaical jsaro- 
dists of the religion of the Gospel, who preach and persecute 
with an equally intolerant spirit." 

Lord Byron, writing that day to Murray, says : — 
" I never could understand what they mean by accusing me 
of irreligion. They may, however, have it their own way. 
This gentleman seems to be my great admirer, so I take what 
he says in good part, as he evidently intends kindness, to which 
I can't accuse myself of being insensible." 

In the evening he talked to and laughed a good deal with 
the Countess Guiccioli about this great compatimento* treat- 
ing it as a great oddity. A few months later, Moore having 
written to him about this same Mr. Mulock, and told him that 
that gentleman was giving lectures upon religion, Lord Bp-on, 
while riding with the young Count G in the forest of Ra- 
venna, made his profession of faith, and finding his youthful 
companion not quite orthodox, said to him : " The nature of 
classical and philosophical studies generally paralyzes all log- 
ical minds, and that is why many young heads leave college im- 
believers : you are even still more so, because you mix np your 
religious views with your political antijoathies. As for me, in 
my early youth, when I left college, where I had to bow to 
very superior and stronger minds who themselves were under 
various evil influences of college and of youth, I was more than 
heterodox. Time and reflection have changed my mind upon 
these subjects, and I consider Atheism as a folly. As for 
Catholicism, so little is it objectionable to me, that I wish my 
daughter to be brought up in that religion, and some day to 
marry a Catholic. If Catholicism, after all, suggests difticul- 
ties of a nature which it is difiicult for reason to get over, are 
these less great than those which Protestantism creates ? Are 
not all the mysteries common to both creeds ? Catholicism at 
least offers the consolation of Purgatoiy, of the Sacraments, of 
absolution and forgiveness ; whereas Protestantism is barren 
of consolation for the soul." 

* S^'mpathy. 
F 2 



130 Lord Byron's 

This oj)en profession of faith, expressed by such a man as 
Lord Byron, in a calm and dispassionate tone, jDroduced a 
great impression upon the young count. It had been so 
much the fashion to consider him as irreligious, that one 
Avould say that even his friends were of the same opinion. 
Some time had elapsed since Byron had sent a translation 
from the Armenian of one of the Epistles of St. Paul, which 
Murray delayed in publishing. Rather annoyed by this de- 
lay, Byron wrote to him on the 9th of October, 1821, from 
Ravenna : — 

" The Epistle of St. Paul, which I translated from the Ar- 
menian, for what reason have you kept it back, though you 
published that stuff which gave rise to the ' Vampire ?' Is it 
because you are afraid to print any thing in opposition to the 
cant of the ' Quarterly ' about Manicheisni ? Let me have a 
proof of that Epistle directly. I am a better Christian than 
those parsons of yours, though not paid for being so." 

If Byron hated fanatical and persecuting clergymen, he, on 
the other hand, entertained great regard for priests of every 
denomination, when he knew that they exercised their func- 
tions without fanaticism and in a tolerant spirit. Among his 
dearest and earliest friends he placed two young clergymen,* 
both distinguished in their profession by their piety and their 
attainments. At Ravenna, his alms in favor of churches and 
monasteries were very liberal. If the organ were not in order, 
if the steeple wanted repairs. Lord Byron's pecuniary assist- 
ance was asked for, and he ever gave liberally though it was 
for the benefit of the Catholic community. He was always 
indignant at his writings, especially if connected with religion, 
being sent back to him by Murray with alterations to which 
he was no party. On one occasion he reproached him in the 
following terms : — 

" In referring to the mistake in stanza 132, I take the op- 
portunity to desire that in future, in all parts of my writings 
referring to religion, you will be more careful, and not forget 
that it is possible that in addressing the Deity a blunder may 
become a blasphemy: and I do not choose to suffer such infa- 
mous perversions of my words or of my intentions. I saw the 
canto by accident." 

* The Rev. Mr. Hodgson and the Rev. Mr. Harness. 



Religious Opinions. 131 

His dearest paternal care Avas the religious education to be 
given to his natural daughter, Allegra, who was with him at 
Ravenna. In writing to Mr. and Mrs. Hoppner, to give them 
tidings of his dear Allegra, whom he had sent to a convent in 
Romagna to be educate d there, he declares that in presence 
of the political disquietuds. which reigned in the Romagna, he 
thought he could not do better than send his child to that con- 
vent. Here " she would receive a little instruction, and some 
notions of morality and the principles of religion." 

Moore adds to this letter a note, which runs thus : — 

" With such anxiety did he look to this essential j^art of 
his daughter's education, that notwithstanding the many ad- 
vantages she was sure to derive from the kind and feminine 
superintendence of Mrs. Shelley, his apprehensions lest her 
feelings upon religious subjects might be disturbed by the 
conversation of Shelley himself prevented him from allowing 
her to remain under his friend's roof." 

The Bible, as is well known, constituted his favorite read- 
ing. Often did he find in the magnificent poetry of the Bi- 
ble matter for inspiration. His " Hebrew Melodies " jDrove it, 
and as for the Book of Job, he used to say that it was far too 
sublime for him even to attempt to translate it, as he would 
have wished. Toward the end of his stay at Ravenna, when 
his genius was most fertile and almost superhiuBan — (he wrote 
five dramas and many other admirable poems in fifteen months, 
that is to say, in less time than it requires to copy them) — two 
biblical subjects inspired his muse : " Cain," and " Heaven 
and Earth." Both were admirably suited to his pen. He 
naturally treated them as a philosopher, but without any pre- 
conceived notion of making any religious converts. His ene- 
mies nevertheless seized hold of these pieces, to incriminate 
him and imj^ugn his religious belief. I have spoken elsewhere* 
of that truly scandalous persecution. I will only add here 
that Moore, timid as he usually was when he had to face an 
unpopularity which came from high quarters, and alarmed by 
all the cries proceeding from party spirit, wrote to approve 
the beauty of the poem in enthusiastic terms, but disapproved 
of the harm which some doubts expressed therein might pro- 
duce. Byron replied : — 

* Article on his Life in Italy and at Pisa. 



132 Lord Byron s 

"There is nothing against the immortality of the soul in 
' Cain,' that I recollect. I hold no such opinions ; but in a ' 
drama the first rebel and the first murderer must be made to 
talk according to his character." 

And in another letter he says, with regard to the same 
subject : — 

" With respect to religion, can I never convince you that I 
have no such opinions as the characters in that drama, which 
seem to have frightened every body ? Yet they are nothing 
to the expressions in Goethe's ' Faust ' (which are ten times 
hardier), and not a whit more bold than those of Milton's 
' Satan.' My ideas of character may run away with me : like 
all imaginative men, I, of course, embody myself with the char- 
acter while I draw it, but not a moment after the Yien is from 
off the paper. 

" I am no enemy to religion, but the contrary. As a proof, 
I am educating my natural daughter a strict Catholic in a con- 
vent of Romagna, for I think people can never have enough 
of religion, if they are to have any. I incline myself very 
much to the Catholic doctrines ; but if I am to write a drama, 
I must make my characters speak as I conceive them likely 
to argue." 

The sympathy of persons sincerely religious was extremely 
agreeable to him. A short time after he had left Ravenna 
for Pisa, a Mr. John Sheppard sent him a prayer he had found 
• among the jDapers belonging to his young wife, whom he had 
lost some two years before. Lord Byron thanked him in a 
beautiful letter, in which he consoled the distressed husband 
by assuring him of his belief in immortality, and of his con- 
fidence that he would again see the worthy person whom him- 
self he could not but admire, for her virtues and her pure and 
simple i:)iety. 

" I am obliged to you," he added, " for your good Avishes, 
and more than obliged by the extract from the papers of the 
beloved object whose qualities you have so well described in 
a few words. I can assure you that all the fame which ever 
cheated Inmianity into higher notions of its own importance, 
would never weigh in my mind against the pure and pious 
interest which a virtuous being may be pleased to take in my 
welfare. In this point of view I would not exchange the 



Religious Opinions, 133 

prayers of the deceased in ray behalf for the united glory of 
Homer, Csesar, and Napoleon, could such be accumulated 
upon a living head. Do me at least the justice to supi:)ose 
that 

'Video nieliora proboque,' 

however the deteriora sequor may have been apjilied to my 
conduct. Byron." 

Not only did Lord Byron prevent his reason being influ- 
enced by the arguments of others, but even by the dictates of 
his own heart. Both his mind and his heart were perfectly 
independent of one another, nay, often took different direc- 
tions. It was to him unquestionably painful to see such a di- 
vision, but it was the fatal result of the excessive develop- 
inent of the powers of each. In the same letter to Mr. ShejD- 
pard which we have quoted, and which is full of gratitude for 
the prayers which the young wife had addressed to heaven to 
obtain his conversion, Byron adds : — 

"A man's creed does not depend upon himself : who can 
say, ' I will believe this, that, or the other T and, least of all, 
that which he least can comprehend," 

Walter Scott once told him in London that he was con- 
vinced he would daily become more and more religious, 

" What !" vehemently replied Lord Byron, " do you believe 
that I could become bigoted ?" 

" No," said Walter Scott, " I only think that the influence 
of some great mind might modify your religious views," 

Gait says the same thing ; — 

"A mind like Byron's," says he, " was little susceptible of 
being impressed by the reasonings of ordinary men. Truth, 
in visiting him, must come accompanied by every kind of so- 
lemnity, and preceded by respect and reverence, A marked 
superiority, a recognized celebrity, were indispensable to com- 
mand his sincere attention." 

Without taking implicitly for granted the rather exagger- 
ated opinion of Gait with respect to Lord Byron, we must al- 
low that the great poet's attention could not be captivated by 
reasonings of a superficial kind, but could be influenced only 
by great learning, and powerful arguments which had convic- 
tion for their basis. 



134 Lord Byron's 

But he might have found at Pisa the great intellectual in- 
fluence spoken of, for he found Shelley there. Seeing him 
every day, in the quiet intimacy which the delightful sojourn 
in Tuscany procui'ed for them, it was easy for both to forget 
all the troubles of an agitated and political existence, and only 
to think about the world of spirits. Shelley had every oppor- 
tunity for inculcating his doctrines, having, or rather being 
able to exercise, the most exclusive influence upon Byron's 
mind. Did he exercise that influence, and if he did not, for 
what reason ? 

W^ have said that Shelley, notwithstanding his original 
views, his extreme readiness to be impressed by every thing 
he heard and saw, was often the victim of his reading. He 
had read a great deal, and though since he had written the 
"Apology for Atheism" he had not changed his mind as to 
his metaphysical tenets, nevertheless the study of the German 
philosophy, and especially of Spinoza's, had produced on him 
a revolution of ideas. From a materialistic atheism, which 
denies the existence of God in every thing, he had gone over 
to a kind of mystic pantheism, which supposes God to be ev- 
erpvhere and in every thing. This species of pantheism is 
in reality but a disguised atheism, but which, in such a man 
as Shelley, appeared more in the actions of his life as a j^ervad- 
ing devotion than an impious belief. Shelley ever adored all 
that is beautiful, true, and holy. From this it followed that 
his doctrines, far f i-om appearing to be the result of pride, 
seemed, on the contrary, to be founded upon humility, sacrifice, 
and devotion to humanity. If the mystic pantheism of Spi- 
noza could have found a living justification of its silly princi- 
ples, and an excuse for its want of power, Shelley would have 
supplied both. The individuality, always more or less egotist- 
ical, which is prominent in the word ego, seemed positively 
to have ceased to exist with him : one would have said that 
he almost already felt himself absorbed in that universal and 
divine substance, which is the God of Spinoza. If in a centu- 
ry like ours such a philosophy as Eclecticism could return and 
become again a doctrinal institution, Shelley might have per- 
sonified it. He had so sacrificed his individuality to chimeras 
of all kinds, that he appeared to consider himself a mere phe- 
nomenon, and to look upon the external world as mere fiction, 



Eeligious Opinions. 135 

in order that the impossible and never-to-be-found divinity of 
his dreams might occupy all the space. 

He was perhaps the meekest, most generous, and the most 
modest of the creatures of the true God, whom he yet per- 
sistently refused to recognize as his Creator, 

If, however, there was no impiety in his irreligion, no real 
pride, in his pride, there existed that weakness, if I may use 
the word, peculiar to a brain which can not grasp at reality, 
but adheres to a chimera as a basis for its arguments. 

" His works," says Gait, " are soiled by the false judgments 
proceeding from a mind which made him look at every thing 
in a false light, and it must be allowed that that mind was 
either troubled or defective by nature." 

If this opinion is too severe, it is, however, certain that 
Shelley had so exalted an imagination that his judgment suf- 
fered by it. As he is in his works, so Avas he in all the com- 
monest actions of his life. A few anecdotes will serve to make 
him still better known. 

Once, at Pisa, he went to see Count Gamba, who expected 
him, for some charitable purpose which they were to agree 
upon together. A violent storm burst forth suddenly, and the 
wind tore a tile from a roof, and caused it to fall on Shelley's 
head. The blow was very great, and his forehead was cov- 
ered with blood. This, however, did not in the least prevent 
his proceeding on his way. When Count Gamba saw him in 
this state he was much alarmed, and asked him how it had 
occurred. Shelley replied quite calmly, passing his hand over 
his head, just as if he had foi'gotten all about it, that it was 
true that the wind had blown down a tile which had fallen on 
his head, but that he would be taken care of later upon his 
return home. Shelley was not rich, but whenever he went to 
his banker's it was necessary that no one should require his 
assistance, in order that the money which he had gone to 
fetch should come home untouched. As, on one occasion, 
he was returning from a visit to his banker's, some one at 
the door of his house asked for assistance. Shelley hastily 
got up the stairs, and throwing down his gold and notes on 
the floor, rushed suddenly away, crying out to Mrs. Shelley, 
"There, pick it all up." This the lady did as well as she could, 
for she was a woman of order, and as much attached to 



136 Lord Byron's 

the reality of tilings as her husband was wanting in that par- 
ticular. 

I shall not multiply these characteristic instances of the 
man, but will only add that such incidents were by no means 
uncommon, nay, th^t they were matters of daily occurrence. 

There was almost a kind of analogy in his life between him 
and Spinoza. Notwithstanding their great qualities and mer- 
its, both were hated and persecuted for sufficiently just mo- 
tives, — society having the right of repudiating doctrines 
which tend to its destruction ; but both were persecuted in un- 
due and unfair proportions. Both had weak and sickly con- 
stitutions. Both had great and generous souls. Both endeav- 
ored to understand the laws which govern the destiny of the 
world, without ever being subject to their moral consequen- 
ces, and both devoted themselves to be practically useful to 
their fellow-creatures — a contradiction which was the effect 
of their too generous minds. 

In Shelley's heart the dominant wish was to see society 
entirely reorganized. The sight of human miseries and in- 
firmities distressed him to the greatest degree ; but, too mod- 
est himself to believe that he was called upon to take the in- 
itiative, and inaugurate a new era of good government and 
fresh laws for the benefit of humanity, he would have been 
pleased to see such a genius as Byron take the initiative in 
this undertaking. " He can be the regenerator of his coun- 
try," wrote Shelley, speaking of Byron, in 1818, at Venice. 

Shelley therefore did his best to influence Lord Byron. 
But the latter hated discussions : he could not bear entering 
into philosophical speculation at times when his soul craved 
the consolations of friendship and his mind a little rest. He 
was quite insensible to reasonings, which often appear sub- 
lime because they are clothed in words incomprehensible to 
those who have not sought to understand their meaning. 
But he made an exception in favor of Shelley. He knew that 
he could not shake his faith in a doctrine founded upon illu- 
sions, by his incredulity : but he listened to him with pleas- 
ure, not only on account of Shelley's good faith and sincerity 
of meaning, but also because he argued upon false data with 
such talent and originality that he was both interested and 
amused. But with all his great and noble qualities was it to 



Religious Opinions. 137 

be expected that Lord Byron would fall into the doctrines prof- 
fered by pantheists'? Doctrines rejected by reason, which 
wound the heart, are opposed to tlie most imperative neces- 
sities of our nature, and only bring desolation to our minds. 

Lord Byron had examined every kind and species of phi- 
losophy by the light of common sense, and by the instinct of 
his genius : the result had been to make him compassionate 
toward the vain weaknesses of the human understanding, and 
to convince him that all systems which have hypothesis as 
groundwork are illusions, and consequently likely to perish 
with their authors. 

Pantheism in j^articular was odious to him, and he es- 
teemed it to be the greatest of absurdities. He made no dif- 
ference between the Pantheism " absolute," which mixes up 
that which is infinite with that which is finite, and that which 
struggles in vain to keep clear of Atheism. 

Li an age like oiirs, when the common tendency is of 
a materialistic character, such as almost to defy the power 
of man, mysticism has little or no locus standi. Shelley's 
opinions, on account of their appearance of spiritualism, were 
most likely of any to interest Byron ; but, founded as they 
are upon fancy, could they please him ? Could he possibly 
consent to lose his individuality, deny his own freedom of 
will, all responsibility of action, and hence all his privileges, 
his future existence, and all principles of morality ? Could 
he possibly admit that the doctrine which prescribed these 
sacrifices was better than any other? Even with the best 
intentions, could any of the essential, moral, and holy prin- 
ciples of nature be introduced into such a system? Byron 
could not but condemn it, and he attributed all Shelley's 
views to the aberrations of a mind which is happier when it 
dreams than when it denies. 

Here, then, was the cause of his being inaccessible to Shel- 
ley's arguments. He used sometimes to exclaim, " Why Shel- 
ley appears to me to be mad with his metaphysics," This 
he one day repeated to Count Gamba at Pisa, as Shelley 
walked out and he came in. " We have been discussing 
metaphysics," said he : " what trash in all these systems ! 
Say what they will, mystery for mystery, I still find that of 
the Creation the most reasonable of any." 



138 Lord Byron's 

He made no disguise of the difficulties which he found in 
admitting the doctrine of a God, Creator of the world, and 
entirely distinct from it ; but he added, " I prefer even that 
mystery to the contradictions by which other systems en- 
deavor to replace it." He certainly found that in the mys- 
tery of Creation there existed the j^roof of the weakness of 
our minds, but he declared that pantheism had to explain 
absurdities far too evident for a logical mind to adopt its 
tenets. " They find, " said he, " that reason is more easily 
satisfied with a system of unity like theirs, in which all is 
derived from one principle only : may be, but what do we 
ask of truth ? why all our never-ceasing eflbrts in its pur- 
suit ? Is it merely that we may exercise the mind, and make 
truth the toy of our imagination ? Impossible. At any rate 
it would be a secret to which, as yet, God has not given us 
any clue. But in doing this, in constantly placing the phe- 
nomena of creation before us without their causes or without 
ever explaining them, and at the same time instilling into 
our souls an insatiable thirst for truth, the Almighty has 
placed within us a voice which at times reminds us that He 
is preparing some surprise for us; and we trust that that 
surprise may be a happy one." 

Poor Shelley lost his time with Byron. But, however 
much Byron objected to his doctrines, he had no similar ob- 
jection to Shelley himself, for whom he professed a great 
respect and admiration. He grieved to find so noble an in- 
tellect the victim of hallucination which entirely blinded him 
to the perception of truth. Shelley, however, did not despair 
of succeeding in making Byron some day give up what he 
termed his philosophical errors, and his persistency earned 
for him the appellation of " serpent " Avhich Byron gave him 
in jest. This persisteney, which at the same time indicates 
the merit of Byron's resistance, has often been mentioned 
by Shelley himself Writing from Pisa to a friend in En- 
gland, a very few days befoi-e his death, and alluding to a 
letter from Moore which Byron had shown him, and wherein 
"Cain" was attributed to the influence which he (Shelley) 
had evidently exercised over Byron, he said, " Pray assure 
Moore that in a philosophical point of view I have not the 
slightest influence over Byron ; if I had, be sure I should 



Religious Opinions. 139 

use it for the purpose of uprooting his dehisions and his er- 
rors. He had conceived ' Cain ' many years ago, and he had 
ah'eady commenced writing it when I saw him last year at 
Ravenna. How happy I should be could I attribute to my- 
self, even indirectly, a part in that immortal work !" 

Moore wrote to Byron on the same subject a little later, 
and received the folloAving reply: — "As for poor Shelley, 
who also frightens you and the world, he is, to my knowl- 
edge, the least egotistical and kindest of men. I know no 
one who has so sacrificed both fortune and sentiments for 
the good of others ; as for his speculative opinions, we have 
none in common, nor do I wish to have any." 

All the poems which he wrote at this time, and which ad- 
mitted of his introducing the religious element either pur- 
posely or accidentally into them, prove one and all that his 
mind, as regards religion, was as we have shown it to be. 
This is particularly noticeable in his mystery called " Heaven 
and Earth ;" but the sai:pe remark is applicable to others, 
such as the " Island," and even to some passages in " Don 
Juan." "Heaven and Earth" — a poem which appeared 
about this time, and which he styled " A Mystery " — is a 
biblical poem in which all the thoughts agree with the Book 
of Genesis, and " which was inspired," says Gait, " by a mind 
both serious and patriarchal, and is an echo of the oracles of 
Adam and of Melchisedec." In this work he exhibits as 
much veneration for scriptural theology as Milton himself. 
In the " Island," which he wrote at Genoa, there are passa- 
ges which penetrate the soul with so religious a feeling, that 
Benjamin Constant, in reading it, and indignant at hear- 
ing Byron called an unbeliever, exclaimed in his work on 
religion, "I am assured that there are men who accuse 
Lord Byron of atheism and impiety. There is more re- 
ligion in the twelve lines which I have quoted than in the 
past, present, and future writings of all his detractors put 
together." 

Even in " Don Juan," in that admirable satire which, not 
being rightly understood, has given rise to so many calum- 
nies, he says, after having spoken in the fifteenth canto of 
the moral greatness of various men, and among others of 
Socrates : — 



140 Lord Byron's 

"And thou, Diviner still, 
Whose lot it is by man to be mistaken, 

And th}' pure creed made sanction of all ill ? 
Redeeming worlds to be by bigots shaken, 
How was thy toil rewarded?" 

At the end of this stanza he wrote the followmg note : — 

" As it is necessary in these times to avoid ambiguity, I 
say that I mean by ' Diviner still,' Christ. If ever God was 
man — or man God — he was both. I never arraigned his 
creed, but the use or abuse made of it. Mr, Canning one 
day quoted Christianity to sanction negro slavery, and Mr. 
Wilberforce had little to say in reply. And was Christ cru- 
cified that black men might be scourged ? If so, he liad bet- 
ter been born a mulatto, to give both colors an equal chance 
of freedom, or at least salvation." 

Notwithstanding these beautiful lines, which were equal- 
ly professions of faith, England, instead of doing Byron jus- 
tice, continued more than ever to persecute him. 

Shortly afterward he embarked, at Genoa for Greece, and 
halted at Cephalonia. He there made the acquaintance of 
a young Scotchman, named Kennedy, who was attached as 
doctor to the Greek army. Before taking to medicine this 
young man had studied law, with the intention of going to 
the Edinburgh bar. He was so deeply convinced of the 
truths of Christianity, and so familiar with its teaching, that 
he would fain have imparted his belief to every one he met. 
From his position he found himself among a host of young 
officers, mostly Scotch, and all more or less lax in their re- 
ligious practices. Among these, however, he met with four 
who consented to listen to his explanation of the doctrines 
of Christianity. As their principal challenge was to show 
proofs that the Bible was of divine origin, he accepted the 
challenge in the hope of making some conversions. 

One of these oificers informed Lord Byron of this project- 
ed meeting, and Byron, from the interest which he always 
took in the subject which was to be their ground of discus- 
sion, expressed a wish to be present. " You know," said he, 
" that I am looked upon as a black sheep, and yet I am not 
as black as the world makes me out, nor worse than 
others," — words, which, from the fact of his rarely doing him- 
self justice, were noteworthy in his mouth. 



Eeligious Opinions. 141 

Under such auspices, then, was Kennedy fortunate enough 
to open his discussion, and Lord Byron was present in com- 
pany of the young Count Gamba and Dr. Bruno. 

Mr. Kennedy has given a detailed account of this meeting, 
as also of his subsequent conversations with Lord Byron. 
We will mention some of them here, because they shoAV 
Lord Byron's religious opinions in the latter portion of his 
life. Mr. Kennedy had made a condition that he should be 
allowed to speak, without being interrupted, but at various 
intei'vals, for twelve hours. This conditio^, was soon set 
aside, and then Lord Byron joined the conversation. After 
exciting admiration by his patient silence, he astounded ev- 
ery one as an interlocutoi*. If Kennedy wa-s well versed in 
the Scriptures, Lord Byron was not less so, and even able to 
correct a misquotation from Holy Writ. The direct object 
ot the meeting was to prove that the ScrijDtures contained 
the genuine and direct revelation of God's will. Mr. Ken- 
nedy, however, becoming a little entangled in a series of 
quotations, which had not the force that was required to 
prove his statements, and, seeing that a little impatience be- 
trayed itself among the audience, could not resist showing 
some temper, and accusing his heai-ers of ignorance. " Strange 
accusation, when applied to Lord Byron," says Gait, Lord 
Byron, who had come there to be interested, and to learn, did 
not notice the taunt of Mr. Kennedy, but merely remarked, 
" that all that can be desired is to be convinced of the truth 
of the Bible, as containing really the word of God ; for if 
this is sincerely believed, it must follow, as a necessary con- 
sequence, that one must believe all the doctrines contained 
m it." 

He then added, that in his youth he had been brought 
up by his mother in very strict religious principles; had 
read a large number of theological works, and that Barrow's 
writings had most pleased him ; that he regularly went to 
church, that he was by no means an unbeliever who denied- 
the Scriptures, and wished to grope in atheism ; but, on the 
contrary, that all his wish was to increase his belief, as half- 
convictions made him wretched. He declai-ed, however, that 
he could not thoroughly understand the Scriptures. He 
also added, that he entertained the highest respect for, and 



142 Lord Byron's 

confidence in, those who believed conscientiously ; but that 
he had met with many whose conduct differed from the 
principles they professed simply from interested motives, and 
esteemed the number of those who really believed in the 
Scriptures to be very small. He asked him about his opin- 
ion as to various writers against religion, and among others 
of Sir W. Hamilton, Bellamy, and Warburton, who pretend 
that the Jews had no notion of a future existence. He con- 
fessed that the sight of so much evil was a difficulty to him, 
which he could not explain, and which made him question 
the perfect goodness of the Creator. He dwelt upon this 
argument a long time, exhibiting as much tenderness of 
heart as force of reasoning. Kennedy's answers were weak, 
as must be those of one who denies the measure of evil, in 
order that he may not be compassionate toward it, and who 
promises a reward in after life to escape the necessity of its 
being bestowed in the present. In reply Lord Byron point- 
ed to moral and physical evil which exists among savages, 
to whom Scripture is unknown, and who are bereft of all the 
means of becoming civilized people. Why are they de- 
prived of these gifts of God ? and what is to be the ultimate 
fate of Pagans? He quoted several objections made to our 
Lord by the apostles ; mentioned prophecies which had nev- 
er been fulfilled, and spoke of the consequences of religious 
wars. Kennedy replied with much ability, and even with a 
certain degree of eloquence, and prudently made use of the 
ordinary theological arguments. But to influence such a 
mind as Byron's more was required. In the search after 
truth, he looked for hard logic, and eloquence was not re- 
quired by him. Fenelon could not have persuaded him ; 
but Descartes might have influenced him. He preferred, in 
fact, in such arguments, the method of the geometrician to 
that of the artist ; the one uses truth to arrive at truth, the 
other makes use of the beautiful only, to arrive at the same 
.end. 

The meeting lasted four hours, and created much sensa- 
tion in the island, and every one agreed in praising Lord 
Byron's great knowledge of the Scriptures, joined to his mod- 
eration and modesty. Kennedy, however, a little irritated 
by the superiority granted to his adversary, did his best to 



Religious Opinions. 143 

dissipate the impression produced by it. He went so far 
as to reproach his friends for having allowed themselves to 
be blinded by the rank, the celebrity, and the prestige of 
Lord Byron. " His theological knowledge being," said he, 
"in reality quite ordinary and superficial." This meeting 
was the only one in which Lord Byron took a part, for he 
left Argostoli for Metaxata. 

The meetings continued, however, for some time longer, 
and Kennedy showed a zeal which deserved to meet with 
better success. He brought before his audience with talent 
every possible reasoning in favor of orthodoxy; but his au- 
dience, composed of young men, were far too engrossed with 
worldly occupations to be caught by the ardor of their mas- 
ter's zeal. Disappointed at not seeing Lord Byron again 
among them, they all deserted Kennedy's lectures just at the 
time when he was going to speak of miracles and prophecies, 
the subject of all others upon which he had built his greatest 
hopes. Not only did they desert the hall, but actually over- 
whelmed the speaker with mockery. Some declared they 
would piit oif their conversion to a more advanced age ; oth- 
ers actually maintained that they had less faith than before. 

Meanwhile Kennedy, though disappointed in his religious 
enthusiasm on the one hand, received some consolation on 
the other, at the hands of Lord Byron, who had not forgot- 
ten him, and who often inquired after him though he had 
not been convinced by his arguments. Kennedy also had 
conceived a great liking for Byron. He admired in the poet 
all his graceful qualities and his unequalled talents. He wish- 
ed, but dared not yet, visit Lord Byron. Meeting, however, 
Count Gamba at Argostoli on one occasion, and hearing from 
him that Byron was on the point of departure for Continental 
Greece, he resolved to pay him a visit, " as much," said he, 
" to show the respect which is due to such a man, as to satisfy 
one's own curiosity in seeing and hearing so distinguished a 
person." 

Byron received him with his natural cordiality. He made 
him stay to dinner with him, and thus gave him the oppor- 
tunity of entering into a long conversation. Kennedy, who 
never lost sight of his mission of proselytism, brought the 
conversation round to the object of his wishes, and pi'efaced 



144 Lord Byron's 

his arguments by saying that he was prepared to talk upon 
the matter ; but that he had no doubt lost his time, since it 
was not likely that his lordship would consider these subjects 
urgent at that moment. Byron smiled and replied, " It is 
true that at the present time I have not given that impor- 
tant subject all my attention, but I should nevertheless be 
curious to know the motives which not only have convinced 
you, as a man of sense and reflection, as you undoubtedly 
are, of the truth of religion, but also have induced you to 
profess Christianity with such zeal." 

" If there had been men," said Kennedy, " Avho had reject- 
ed Christianity, there were greater men still who had accept- 
ed it ; but to adopt a system merely because others have 
adopted it is not to act rationally, imless it is proved that 
the great minds which adopted it were mistaken." 

" But I have not the slightest desire," answei'ed Byron, 
" to reject a doctrine without having investigated it. Quite 
the contrary ; I Avish to believe, because I feel extremely un- 
happy in a state of uncertainty as to Avhat I am to believe." 

Kennedy having told him then that to obtain the grace of 
faith, he should pray humbly for it, Byron replied, that prayer 
does not consist in the act of kneeling or of repeating certain 
words in a solemn manner : " Devotion is the affection of the 
heart, and that I possess, for when I look at the marvels of 
creation I bow before the Majesty of Heaven, and when I 
experience the delights of life, health, and happiness, then my 
heart dilates in gratitude toward God for all His blessings." 

" That is not sufficient," continued the doctor. " I should 
wish your lordship to read the Bible with the greatest at- 
tention, having prayed earnestly before that the Almighty 
may grant you the grace to understand it. For, however 
great your talents, the book will be a sealed letter to you 
unless the Holy Spirit inspires you." 

"I read the Bible more than you think," said Byron. " I 
have a* Bible which my sister, who is goodness itself, gave 
me, and I often peruse it." 

He then went into his bedroom, and brouglit out a hand- 
somely-bound pocket Bible which he showed the doctor. The 
latter advised his continuing to read it, but expressed his 
surprise that Byron should not have better understood it. 



Keligious Opinions. 145 

He looked out several passages in which it is enjoined that 
we should pray with humility if we wish to understand the 
truth of the Gospel ; and where it is expressly said that no 
human wisdom can fathom these truths ; but that God alone 
can reveal them to us, and enlighten our understanding ; 
that we must not scrutinize His acts, but be submissive as 
children to His will ; and that, as obedience through the sin 
of our first parents, and our own evil inclinations, has be- 
come for us a positive difficulty, we must change our hearts 
before we can obey or take pleasure in obeying the com- 
mandments of our Lord God ; and, finally, that all, whatever 
the rank of each, are subject to the necessity of obedience. 

Byron's occupations and ideas at that time were not quite 
in accordance with the nature of these holy words, but he re- 
ceived them with his usual kind and modest manner, because 
they came from one who was sincere. He only replied, that, 
as to the wickedness of the world, he was quite of his opinion, 
as he had found it in every class of society; but that the 
doctrines which he had put forth would oblige him to ]:)lunge 
into all the problems respecting the Old Testament and orig- 
inal sin, which many learned persons, as good Christians as 
Dr. Kennedy, did not hesitate to reject. He then showed the 
doctor, in answer to the latter's rather intolerant assertion 
of the omnipotence of the Bible, how conversant he was with 
the subject by quoting several Christian authors Avho thought 
differently. He quoted Bishop Watson, who, while profess- 
ing Christianity, did not attribute such authority to the con- 
tents of the Bible. He also mentioned the "VValdenses, who 
were such good Christians that they were called "the ti'ue 
Church of Christ," but who, nevertheless, looked upon the 
Bible as merely the history of the Jews, He then showed 
that the Book of Genesis was considered by many doctors of 
divinity as a mere symbol or allegory. He took x;p the de- 
fense of Gibbon against Kennedy's insinuation that the great 
historian had maliciously and intentionally kept back the 
truth ; he quoted Warburton as a man whose ingenious the- 
ories have found much favor with many learned persons; 
finally, he proved to the doctor that, in any case, he could 
not himself be accused of ignorance of the subject. 

This conversation afforded him the opportunity also of re- 

G 



146 Lord Byron's 

futing the accusation brought against him by some of his 
numerous enemies ; namely, that of having a tendency to the 
doctrines of Manicheism. Kennedy having said that the 
spirit of CAdl, as well as the angels, is subject to the will of 
God, Lord Byron replied, — 

" If received in a literal sense, I find that it gives one a 
far higher notion of God's majesty, power, and wisdom, if we 
believe that the spirit of evil is really subject to the will of 
the Almighty, and is as easily controlled by Him as the ele- 
ments follow the respective laws which He has made for 
them." 

Byron could not bear any thing which took away from 
the greatness of the Divinity, and his words all tended to re- 
place the Divinity in that incomprehensible space where He 
must be silently acknowledged and adored. Their conver- 
sation extended to other j^oints of religious belief While 
the doctor, taking the Bible to be the salvation of mankind, 
indulged in exaggerated and intolerant condemnation of the 
Catholic Church, Avhich he called an abominable hierarchy 
not less to be regretted than Deism and Socinianism, By- 
ron again displayed a spirit of toleration and moderation. 
Though he disapproved of the doctor's language, he did not 
contradict him, believing him to be sincere in his recrimina- 
.tions, but brought back the conversation to that point from 
which common sense should never depart. He deplored with 
him existing hypocrisies and superstitions, which he looked 
upon as the cause of the unbelief of many in the existence 
of God ; but he added, that it was not confined to the Con- 
tinent only, but likewise existed in England. Listead of rest- 
ing his hojies upon the Bible, he said that he knew the Script- 
ures well enough " to be sure that if the spirit of meekness 
and goodness which the religion of the Gospel contains were 
put into practice by men, there would certainly be a marvel- 
lous change in this wicked world ;" and he finished by say- 
ing, that as for himself he had, as a rule, ever respected those 
who believed conscientiously, whatever that belief might be ; 
in the same manner as he detested from his heart hypocrites 
of all kinds, and especially hypocrites in religion. 

He then changed the topic of conversation, and tui'ned it 
to literature. All he said on that subject is so interesting 



Eeligious Opinions. 147 

that I reserve the record of it to another chapter. The doc- 
tor, however, soon resumed the former subject of their con- 
versation, and, more in the spirit of a missionary than a phi- 
losopher, he went on to recommend the study of Christianity, 
which he said was summed up entirely in the Scriptures. 

" But what wall you have me do ?" said Byron. " I do 
not reject the doctrines of Christianity, I only ask a few more 
proofs to profess them sincerely. I do not believe myself to 
be the vile Christian which many — to whom I have never 
done any harm, and many of whom do not even know me — 
sti'enuously assert that I am, and attack me violently in con- 
sequence." 

The doctor insisted. 

" But," said Byron, " you go too fast. There are many 
points still to be cleared up, and when these shall have been 
explained, I shall then examine what you tell me." 

" What are those difficulties?" replied the doctor. 

"If the subject is important, why delay its explanation? 
You have time ; reason upon it ; reflect. You have the means 
of disposing of the difficulty at your command." • 

" True," answered Bja-on, " but I am the slave of circum.- 
stances, and the sphere in which I live is not likely to make 
me consider the subject."* 

As the doctor became more urgent, Byron said — 

" How will you have me begin ?" 

" Begin this very night to pray God that he may forgive 
yon your sins, and may grant you grace to know the truth. 
If you pray, and read your Bible with purity of intention, the 
result must be that which we so ardently wish for." 

" Well, yes," replied Byron, " I will certainly study these 
matters with attention." 

" But your lordshij) must bear in mind, that you shoidd 
not be discouraged, even w^ere your doubts and difficulties 
to increase ; for nothing can be understood without sufficient 
time and pains. You must weigh conscientiously each argu- 
ment, and continue to pray to God, in whom at least you be- 
lieve, to give you the necessary understanding." 

" Why then," asked Byron, " increase the difficulties, when 
they are already so great ?" » 

The doctor then took the mystery of the Trinity as an 



148 Lord Byron's 

example, and spoke of it as a man who has faith and accepts 
the mystery as a revealed dogma. 

" It is not the province of man," said he, " to comprehend 
or analyze the nature of an existence which is entirely spir- 
itual, such as that of the Divinity ; but we must accept it, • 
and believe in it, because it has been revealed to us, being 
fully convinced that man in his present state will never be 
able to fathom such mysteries." 

He not only blamed those Avho wish to explain all things, 
but likewise the presumption of certain theologians in mix- 
ing up their own arguments Avith the revelations of Script- 
ure in order to prove the unity in the Trmity, and w^ho specu- 
late upon the attributes of the Deity to ascertain the rela- 
tive mode of existence of each of the thi-ee persons who com- 
pose the Trinity. " They must fall," he added, " or lead oth- 
ers to a similar end." Hence he concluded that myster- 
ies should be believed in implicitly, as children believe fully 
what their parents tell them. 

" I therefore advise your lordship," said he, " to put aside 
all difficult subjects, — such as the origin of sin, the foil of 
man, the nature of the Trinity, the mystery of predestination, 
etc., — and to study Christianity not in books of theology, 
which, even the best, are all more or less imperfect, but in 
the careful examination of the Scriptures. By comparing 
each i^art of it, you will at last find a harmony so great in 
all its constituent parts, and so much wisdom in its entire 
whole, that you will no longer be able to doubt its divine 
origin, and hence that it contains the only means of salva- 
tion." 

To so firm and enviable a faith, Byron replied as fol- 
lows : — 

" You recommend what is very difficult ; for how is it 
possible for one who is acqviainted with ecclesiastical history, 
as well as with the writings of the most renowned theologi- 
ans, with all the difficult questions which have agitated the 
minds of the most learned, and who sees the divisions and 
sects which abound in Christianity, and the bitter language 
which is often used by the one against the other ; how is it 
possible, I ask, for such a one not to inquire into the nature 
of the doctrines which have given rise to so much discussion ? 



Religious Opinions. 149 

One Council has pronounced against another ; Popes have be- 
lied their predecessors, books have been written against other 
books, and sects have risen to replace other sects ; the Pope 
has opposed the Protestants and the Protestants the Pope. 
We have heard of Arianism, Socinianism, Methodism, Quaker- 
ism, and numberless other sects. Why have these existed ? 
It is a puzzle for the brain ; and does it not, after all, seem 
safer to say ' Let us be neutral ; let those fight who will, and 
w^hen they have settled which is the best religion, then shall 
we also begin to study it ?' 

" I, however, like," he continued, " your way of thinking, 
in many respects; you make short work of decrees and 
councils, you reject all Avhich is not in harmony with the 
Scriptures, you do not admit of theological works filled with 
Latin and Greek of both high and low church, you would 
even suppress many abuses which have crept into the Church, 
and you are right ; but I question whether the Archbishop 
of Canterbury or the Scotch Presbyterians would consider 
you their ally. 

" As for predestination, I do not believe as S and 

M do on that subject, but as you do ; for it apj)ears to 

me that I am influenced in a manner which I can not under- 
stand, and am led to do things which my will does not di- 
rect. If, as we all admit, there is a suj^reme Ruler of the uni- 
verse, and if, as you say. He rules, over both good and bad 
spirits, then those actions which we pei'form against our will 
are likcAvise under His direction. I have never tried to sift 
this subject, but satisfied myself by believing that there is, 
in certain events, a predestination Avhich depends upon the 
will of God." 

The doctor replied, " that he had founded his belief upon 
his own grounds." 

The doctor then touched u2)on the difierences which ex- 
isted in religious opinions, and expressed his regret at this, 
while showing, nevertheless, some indulgence for those Chris- 
tain sects which do not attack the actual fundamental doctrines 
of Christianity. But he was intolerant as regards other sects, 
such as Arianism, Socinianism, and Swedenborgianism, of 
which lie spoke almost with passion. 

" You seem to hate the Socinians greatly," remarked By- 



150 Lord Byron's 

ron, " but is this charitable ? Why exclude a Socinian, who 
believes honestly, from any hoiDe of salvation ? Does he not 
also found his belief upon the Bible ? It is a religion which 
gains ground daily. Lady Byron is much in favor with its 
followers. We were wont to discuss religious matters to- 
gether, and many of our misunderstandings have arisen from 
that. Yet, on the whole, I think her religion and mine were 
much alike." 

Of course the doctor dei:»lored the existence of such bold 
doctrines. 

Lord Byron then sjaoke of Shelley : — 

" I wish," he said, " you had known him, and that I might 
have got you both together. You remind me of him, not only 
in looks, but by your manner of siieaking." 

Besides j^hysical appearance, it is easy to understand that 
there existed a great likeness between the two minds, differ- 
ent though their moral tendencies might have been. In both 
could be traced that degree of mysticism and expansiveness, 
which make the poet and the missionary. Byron praised the 
virtues of Slielley, and styled them Christian, and spoke main- 
ly of his great benevolence of character, and of his generosity 
above his means. 

" Certainly," replied the doctor, " such rare virtues are cs-. 
teemed among Christians, but they can not be called Chris- 
tian virtues, unless they spring from Christian principles : 
and in Shelley they were not so. His virtues might deserve 
human praise, they were no doubt j^agan virtues ; but they 
were nothing in the eyes of God, since God has declared that 
nothing pleases Him but that which springs from a good mo- 
tive, especially the love of and belief in Christ, which was 
wanting in Shelley." 

When Kennedy had characterized Shelley in even strong- 
er terms, Byron said to him : " I see it is imj^ossible to move 
your soul to any sympathy, or even to obtain from you in com- 
mon justice a little indulgence for an unfortunate young 
man, gifted with a lofty mind and a fine imagination." 

These remarks reveal the tolerant spirit of Lord Byron, 
but they also show how the best natures are spoiled by dog- 
matism. 

The conversation had lasted several hours, Nio-ht was 



Religious Opinions. 151 

coming on, and the doctor, cai-ried away by his zeal, had for- 
gotten the hour. His host, however, did nothing to remind 
him of it, and when Kennedy got up to take his leave, he said 
to Byron, after making excuses for remaining so long, " God 
having gifted you, my lord, with a mind wdiich can grasp 
every subject, I am convinced tliat if your lordship would de- 
vote yourself to the study of religion, you would become one 
of its lights, the pride of your country, and the consolation 
of every honest person." 

Lord Byron replied : — 

" I certainly intend to study the matter, but you must 
give me a little time. You see that I have begun well : I 
listen to all you say. Don't you find that my arguments 
are more like your own than you would have thought ?" 

" Yes," answered the doctor, " and it gives me great pleas- 
ure. I have far better hopes of your lordship's conversion 
than of that of the young officers who listened to me with- 
out understanding the meaning of my words. You have 
shown greater patience and candor than I could have imag- 
ined you to be capable of; whereas they, on the contrary, 
exhibited so hardened a spirit that they appeared to look upon 
the subject as one which lent itself admirably to ridicule and 
laughter." 

" You must allow," said Byron, " that in the times in 
which we are now living it is difficult to bestow attention 
to any serious religious matter. I think, liowever, I can 
promise to reflect even more on the subject than I have done 
hitherto, without, however, promising to adopt your ortho- 
dox views." 

The doctor then asked him leave to present him with the 

work of B , which he commended in high terms, Loi*d 

Byron said he would have great pleasure in reading it, and 
told the doctor that he should always be happy to see him, 
and at any time that he liked to come." " Should I be out 
when you come," he added, " take my books and read until 
my return." 

On leaving Byron the doctor reflected over all that had 
taken place, and feared that his zeal had carried him too far 
— that his long conversation might have tired rather than 
interested Byron ; but on the whole, he concluded by saying 



152 Lord Byron's 

to himself, " It aj^jDears to me, that Byron never exhibited the 
least symptom of fatigue, but, on the contrary, continually 
showed great attention from beginning to end." 

We have, perhaps, dwelt too much in our report of this 
conversation, but we wished to do so for several reasons. 
First, because it shows, better than a public debate, the real 
thoughts and feelings of Byron on religious matters, next, 
the real nature of his religious opinions, and finally we find, 
in Byron's conversation, virtues such as amiability, goodness, 
patience, delicacy, and toleration, which have not been suffi- 
ciently noticed. 

The sympathy which Kennedy had conceived for Byron 
after the public meeting greatly increased after this first 
conversation. The candor and simplicity depicted on his 
handsome countenance, showed that his lofty intelligence 
could, better than any one else, grasp the theories of the 
doctor ; and the latter felt that if he could not prevail in 
making Byron a believer in his own orthodox views, at least 
he could prepare the way for the acquirement of every virtue, 
and he resolved, therefore, to profit by the permission given 
him of often visiting Byron. 

Meanwhile, the young officers continued their jokes, and 
l^retended that Byron was laughing at the doctor, and mak- 
ing use of him in order to study Methodism, which he wished 
to introduce into his poem of "Don Juan." There is, how- 
ever, a community of feeling between two frank natures, and 
Byron felt that the doctoi"'s sincerity commanded respect, 
while the doctor, on the other hand, knew that Lord Byron 
was too earnest to condescend to a mockery of him. 

" There was," says Kennedy, " nothing flighty in his man- 
ner Avith me, and nothing which showed any desire to laugh 
at religion." 

When he returned to see Lord Byron, he found him more 
than ever preoccupied with his approaching departure for 
Continental Greece, and engrossed with a multitude of vari- 
ous occupations and visits. Byron, nevertheless, received 
him most graciously, and maintained that jovial humor which 
was one of his characteristics in conversation. Byron had 
reflected a good deal since his last interview with the doctor, 
but the dn-ection which his thoughts had taken was not pre- 



Keligious Opinions. 153 

cisely that whicli the doctor had advised him to pursue. 
They did not agree with the tenets of the doctor's religion. 
The latter had not advised an unlimited use of one's reason, 
but, on the contrary, had recommended reliance on the tra- 
ditional and orthodox teachings of the Church. To reason, 
however, constituted in Byron a positive necessity. He 
could not admit that God had given us the power of thought 
not to make use of it, and obliged us to believe that which 
in religion, as in other things, appears ridiculous to our reason 
and shocks our sense of justice. " It is useless to tell me," he 
said, somewhere in his memoranda, " that I am to"T3elieve and 
not to reason : you might just as Avell tell a man, ' Wake not, 
but sleep.' Then to be threatened with eternal sufferings 
and torments ! — I can not help thinking that as many devils 
are created by the threat of eternal punishment, as number- 
less criminals are made by the severity of the penal laws." 

Mysteries and dogmas, however, were not objectionable 
to Byron. This was shown in his conversation with Kennedy 
on the subject of the Trinity and of predestination. How- 
ever little disposed he may have been to believe in myster- 
ies, he nevertheless bowed in submission before their exist- 
ence, and resjDected the faith which they inspire in minds 
more happily constituted than his own. His partial skepti- 
cism, or rather that in him Avhich has been so denominated, 
was humble and modest in comparison to Montaigne's skepti- 
cism. Byron admitted that these were mysteries because 
the littleness of man and the greatness of God Avere ever 
present to him. He would have agreed with Newton in say- 
ing that " he was like a child playing on the beach with the 
waves which bathed the sands. The Avater with Avhich he 
played was what he knew ; what ho ignored was the wide- 
spread ocean before him." Surrounded as we are by myster- 
ies on all sides, he would have esteemed it presumption on 
his part to reject, in the name of science, all the mysteries of 
religion, when science itself has only to deal with phenomena. 
All is necessarily a mystery in its origin, and not to under- 
stand was no sufficient reason in the eyes of Byron to deny 
altogether the existence of matters relating to the Divinity. 
Could he reject religious dogmas under the pretext of not 
being able to understand them, when he admitted others 

G2 



154 Lord Byron's 

equally difficult of comprehension, although supported by 
logical proofs ? 

Among the mysteries of religion founded entirely upon 
revelation, there Avas one, however, Avhich not only weighed 
upon his mind, but actually gave him positive pain. This 
■was the dogma of eternal punishment, which he could not 
reconcile Avith the idea of an omnij^otent Creator, as omnip- 
otence implies perfect goodness and justice, of which the ideal 
has been implanted in our hearts. Here again his objections 
sprang from kindness of disposition. 

After speaking a while on the subject of prayer, Byron 
said to Kennedy : — 

" There is a book which I must show you," and, having 
chosen from a number of books on the table an octavo vol- 
ume, entitled " Illustrations of the Moral Government of God, 
by E. Smith, M.D., London," he showed it to Kennedy, and 
asked him whether he knew of it. On Kennedy replying in 
the negative, Byron said that the author of the book i^roved 
that helL was not a place of eteimal punishment. 

" This is no new doctrine," replied Kennedy, " and I pre- 
sume the author to be a Socinian, who, if consistent at all 
wuth his opinions, will sooner or later reject the Bible entire- 
ly, and avow himself to be what he really is already, namely, 
a Deist. Where did your lordship find the book'?" 

" It was sent to me from England," replied Byron, " to con- 
vert me, I suppose. The author's arguments are very pow- 
erful. They are taken from the Bible, and, Avhile proving 
that the day will come when every intellectual being will en- 
joy the bliss of eternal happiness, he shows how impossible 
is the doctrine which pretends that sin and misery can exist 
eternally under the government of a God whose principle at- 
tributes are goodness and love," 

"But," said Kennedy, "how does he then explain the ex- 
istence of sin in the world for upward of 6000 years ? Tliat 
is equally inconsistent with the notion of perfect love and 
goodness as united in God." 

" I can not admit the soundness of your argument," replied 
Byron ; " for God may allow sin and misery to co-exist for 
a time, but His goodness must prevail in the end, and cause 
their existence to cease. At any rate it is better to believe 



Eeligious Opinions. 155 

that the infinite goodness of God, while allowing evil to exist 
as a means of our arriving at perfection, Avill show itself still 
greater some day when every intellectual being shall be pu- 
rified and freed from the bondage of sin and misery." 

As Kennedy persisted in arguing against the author's opin- 
ions. Lord Byron asked him " Why he was so desirous of 
proving the eternity of hell, since such a doctrine Avas most 
decidedly against the gentle and kind character of the teach- 
ing of Christ?" To other arguments on the same subject, 
Byron replied, that he could not determine as to the justice 
of their conclusions, but that he could not help thinking it 
Avould be very desirable to show that in the end all created 
beings must be happy, and therefore rather agreed with Mr. 
Smith than with the doctor. 

As Lord Byron, however, had always allowed that man 
Avas free in thought and action, and therefore a responsible 
being made to justify the ends of Providence, he believed 
that Providence did give some sanction to the laAVS implant- 
ed in our natures. Sinners must be punished, but a merci- 
ful God must proportion punishments to the Aveakness of our 
natures, and Byron therefore inclined toAvard the Catholic 
belief in Purgatory, which agreed better with his own appre- 
ciation of the goodness and mercy of God. 

Lord Byron's preference for Catholicism is Avell known. 
His first successes of oratory in the House of Lords Avere due 
to the caiise of Catholicism in Ireland, Avhich he defended ; 
and Avhen he wished his little daughter AUegra to be brought 
up in the Catholic faith, he Avrote to Mr. Hoppner, British 
consul at Venice, Avho had ahvays taken a lively interest in 
the child, to say that : — 

" In the convent of Bagna-CaA'allo she Avill at least have 
her education advanced, and her morals and religion cared 
for It is, besides, my Avish that she should be a Ro- 
man Catholic, Avhich I look upon as the best religion, as it is 
assuredly the oldest of the A'arious branches of Christianity." 

This predilection for Catholicism was not the result of 
the poetry of that religion, or of the efiect Avhich its jDomps 
and gorgeous ceremonies produced upon the imagination. 
They, no doubt, Avere not indifierent to a mind so easily im- 
pressed as his, but not sufficient to justify his preference; for 



156 Lord Byron's 

Byron, although a poet, never allowed his reason to be sway- 
ed by his imagination. He reasoned upon every subject. 
His objections proceeded as much from his mind as his heart. 
" Catholicism," he was wont say, " is the most ancient of 
worships ; and as for our own heresy, it unquestionably had 
its origin in vice. With regard to those difficulties which 
baffle our understanding, are they more easily explained by 
Protestants than by Catholics ? 

" Catholicism, at least, is a consoling religion, and its be- 
lief in Purgatory conciliates the justice of the Almighty with 
His goodness. Why has Protestantism given up so human 
a belief? To intercede for and do good to beings whom 
we have loved here below, is to be not altogether separated 
from them." 

" I often regretted," he said on one occasion at Pisa, " that 
I was not born a Catholic. Purgatory is a consoling doc- 
trine. I am surprised that the Reformers gave it up, or that 
they did not at least substitute for it something equally con- 
soling. It is," he remarked to Shelley, "a relinement of the 
doctrine of transmigration taught by your stupid philoso- 
phers." 

It Avas, therefore, chiefly this doctrine, and his abhorrence 
of Calvin, which attracted Byron toward Catholicism. A 
comparison was made before him, on one occasion, between 
Catholicism and Protestantism. " What matters," said By- 
ron, " that Protestantism has decreased the number of its obli- 
gations, and reduced its articles of faith ? Both religions pro- 
ceed from the same origin, — authority and examination. It 
matters little that the measures of either be different ; but 
why does the Protestant deny to the Catholic the privilege, 
which 'he claims more than he uses, of free examination? 
Catholics also claim the right of proving the soundness of 
their belief, and, therefore, admit likcAvise the right of discus- 
sion and examination. As for authority, if the Catholic obeys 
the Church and considers it infallible, does not the Protest- 
ant do the same with the Bible ? And while recognizing the 
authority of the Church on the one hand, on the other he 
claims a right to free examination, does he not incur the lia- 
bility of being thought inconsistent ? And, after all, is not 
the authority of the Church the better of the two ? There 



Eeligious Opinions. 157 

seems to gi-eater peace for the mind who confides in it, than 
in the belief in the authority of a book, where one must ever 
seek the way to salvation by becoming a theologian, as it 
were. And is it not fairer to have certain books, such, for 
instance, as the 'Aj^ocalypse,' explained to us by the Church, 
than to have them expounded by peoj^le more or less well 
informed or prejudiced?" 

Such were Byron's views, if not his very words. Before 
Byron left for Greece, Kennedy had several other conversa- 
tions with him ; but as the limits of this chapter do not allow 
of my entering into them, I will merely add that they all 
prove the great charm of Byron's mind, and the gentleness 
of his nature in dealing with persons of contrary opinions to 
his own, but who argued honestly and from conviction. So 
it came about that, although the most docile of the doctor's 
pupils, he refused to change his views concerning eternal 
punishment. During one of the last of Kennedy's visits to 
him, he found several young men with Lord Byron, and 

among these M. S , and M. F . The former, seated 

at one corner of the table, was explaining to Count Garaba 
certain views Avhich Avere any thing but orthodox. Lord 
Byron turned to the doctor, and said : — 

" Have you heard what S said ? I assure you, he has 

not made one &tep toward conversion ; he is worse than 
I am. " 

M. F having joined in the conversation, and said that 

there were many contradictions in the Scriptures, Byron re- 
plied : — 

" This is saying too much : I am a sufficiently good be- 
liever not to discover any contradictions in the Scriptures 
which can not, upon reflection, be explained; what most 
troubles me is eternal punishment : I am not jDrepared to 
believe in so terrible a dogma, and this is my only differ- 
ence with the doctor's views; but he Avill not allow that I 
am an orthodox Christian, unless I agree with him in that 
matter." 

This was said half-seriously, half-jestingly, but in so amia- 
ble a manner, and in a tone which was so free from mockery, 
that even the austere doctor was fain to forgive him for en- 
tertaining such erroneous views. 



158 Lord Byron's 

When Byron left for Missolonghi, he carried away with 
him a real regard for Kennedy, notwithstanding their differ- 
ences of opinion. Kennedy, on the other hand, had con- 
ceived for Byron the greatest liking, and, indeed, shows it 
in his book. His portrait of Loi*d Byron is so good, that we 
have thought it right to reproduce it, together with his gen- 
eral impressions in another chapter. 

Byron's death plunged Kennedy into the deepest grief; 
and it was then that he gathered all his conversations which 
he had had with Lord Byron into one volume, which he pub- 
lished. But his friends, or so-called friends, showed them- 
selves hostile to the publication. Some feared that he 
would exaggerate either Lord Byron's faith or want of it, 
and others, less disinterested, apprehended the revelation of 
some of their own views, which might fail to meet with the 
approval of the public at home. When, therefore, Kenne- 
dy applied to several of these who were at Missolonghi to 
know in what religious frame of mind Byron died, he met 
with rebukes of all kinds, and his credit was attacked by ar- 
ticles in newspapers, endeavoring to show that Byron had 
all along been laughing at the doctor. All these attacks 
might* have influenced Kennedy's picture of Byron, but it 
Avill be seen that, with the exception of a few puritanical 
touches, the artist's picture is not unworthy of the original. 

In the preface to his book, the doctor, not knowing wheth- 
er he should make use of the conversation he had had with 
Byron to give a greater interest to his work, the object of 
which Avas to be of use to the public, answers his own objec- 
tions in the following words : — 

" If my doing so would injure his character or fame, there 
could not be a moment's hesitation in deciding on the base- 
ness of the measure. But, as far as I can judge, a true state- 
ment of what occurred will place his lordship's character in 
a fairer light than he has himself done in many of his writ- 
ings, or than can, jjerhaps, be done by a friendly biographer. 
The brightest parts of his life were those which he spent 
in Cephalonia and Missolonghi, and the fact of his wishing 
to hear Christianity explained by one, simply because he 
believed him to be sincere, confessing that he derived no hap- 
piness from his unsettled notions on religion, expressing a 



Keligious Opinions. 159 

desire to be convinced, and liis carrying with him religious 
books, and promising to give the subject a more attentive 
study than he had ever done, will throw a certain lustre over 
the dai'ker side of his fame, . . . and deprive deists of the 
right of quoting him as a cool, deliberate rejecter of Chris- 
tianity." 

To these very significant declarations, coming as they do 
from so conscientious a believer as Kennedy, I shall add the 
testimony of a few persons who have been conspicuous by 
their hostility to Byron. Mr. Gait is one of these, and yet 
he says: — 

" I am persuaded, nevertheless, that to class him among 
absolute infidels Avere to do injustice to his memory, and that 
he has suflered uncharitably in the opinion of the ' rigidly 
righteous,' who, because he had not attached himself to any 
particular sect or congregation, assumed that he was an ad- 
versary to religion. To claim for him any credit as a pious 
man would be absurd ; but, to sujspose he had not as deep 
an interest as other men ' in his soul's health and welfare,' 
was to impute to him a nature which can not exist." 

And elsewhere, after showing, first, what Byron did not 
believe in ; secondly, what he would have liked to believe, but 
which had not sufiicient grounds to satisfy his reason ; third- 
ly, what he did actually believe, Mr. Gait adds : — 

" Whatever was the degree of Lord Byron's dubiety as to 
points of faith and doctrine, he could not be accused of gross 
ignorance, nor described as animated by any hostile feeling 
against religion." 

The same biogi'apher says elsewhere : — 

" That Byron was deeply imbued with the essence of nat- 
ural piety ; that Jie often felt the power and being of a God 
thrilling in all his frame, and glowing in his bosom, I de- 
clare my thorough persuasion ; and that he believed in some 
of the tenets and in the philosophy of Christianity, as they in- 
fluence the spirit and conduct of men, I am as little disposed 
to doubt ; especially if those portions of his works which only 
trench upon the subject, and which bear the impression of 
fervor and earnestness, may be admitted as evidence. But 
he was not a member of any particular church." 

Medwin,-who might be considered to be an authority, 



160 Lord Byron's 

before his vanity was woixnded by the publication of writ- 
ings wherein his good faith was questioned, and it was 
shown that Lord Byron had no great esteem for his talents, 
says,— 

" It is difficult to judge, from the contradictory nature of 
his Avritings, what the religious opinions of Lord Byron were. 
But on the Avhole, if he were occasionally skeptical, yet his 
wavering never amounted to a disbelief in the divine Found- 
er of Christianity. ' I always took great delight,' observed 
he, ' in the English Cathedral service. It can not fail to in- 
spire every man who feels at all, with devotion. Notwith- 
standing which, Christianity is not the best source of inspi- 
ration for a poet. No poet should be tied down to a direct 
profession of faith. Metaphysics open a vast field. Nature 
and heterodoxy present to the poet's imagination fertile 
sources from which Christianity forbids him to draw; aiidhe 
exemplified his meaning by a review of the works of Tasso 
and Milton. 

" ' Here is a little book somebody has sent me about Chris- 
tianity," he said to Shelley and me, 'that has made me very 
uncomfortable. The reasoning seems to me very strong, the 
proofs are very staggering. I don't think you can answer it, 
Shelley ; at least, I am sure I can't, and, what is more, I don't 
wish to do so.' " 

Speaking of Gibbon, he says, — " L B thought the 

question set at rest in the ' History of the Decline and Fall,' 
but I am not so easily convinced. It is not a matter of voli- 
tion to unbelieve. Who likes to own that he has been a fool 
all his life, — to unlearn all that he has been taught in his 
youth ? Or can think that some of the best men that ever 
lived have been fools ?" And again, — 

" You believe in Plato's three principles, why not in tlie 
Trinity ? One is not more mystical than the other. I don't 
know why I am considered an enemy to religion, and an un- 
believer. I disowned the other day that I was of Shelley's 
school in metaphyics, though I admired his poetry." 

"Although," says Lord Harrington, " Byron Av^as no Chris- 
tian, he Avas a firm believer in the existence of a God. It 
is, therefore, equally remote from truth to represent him as 
either an atheist or a Christian. He was, as he has often 



Religious Opinions. 161 

told me, a confirmed Deist." Further on, the same writer 
adds : — 

" Byron always maintained that he was a skeptic, but he 
was not so at all. During a ride at Cephalonia, which lasted 
two or three hours almost without a j^ause, he began to talk 
about ' Cain ' and his religious opinions, and he condemned all 
atheists, and maintained the principles of Deism." Mr. Fin- 
lay, who used to see Lord Byron in Greece, says, in a letter 
to his friend Lord Harrington : — 

" Lord Byron liked exceedingly to converse upon religious 
topics, but I never once heard him openly profess to be a 
Deist." 

These quotations are sufiiciently numerous, and all point 
to the same conclusion, but I must quote the words of Gam- 
ba before I conclude this subject. He was, as it is known, 
the great friend of Byron, and alas ! sacrificed his noble self, 
at the age of twenty-four, to the cause of Greece. To Ken- 
nedy's mquiries respecting Lord Byron's religious tenden- 
cies at Missolonghi, P. Gamba replied as follows : — 

" My belief is that his religious opinions were not fixed. 
I mean, that he was not more inclined toward one than to- 
ward another of the Christian sects ; but that his feelings 
were thoroughly religious, and that he entertained the high- 
est respect for the doctrines of Christ, which he considered to 
be the source of virtue and of goodness. As for the incom- 
prehensible mysteries of religion, his mind floated in doubts 
which he wished most earnestly to dispel, as they oppressed 
him, and that is why he never avoided a conversation on the 
subject, as you are well aware. 

" I have often had an opportunity of observing him at 
times when the soul involuntarily expresses its most sincere 
convictions ; in the midst of dangers, both at sea and on land ; 
in the quiet contemplation of a calm and beautiful night, in 
the deepest solitude, etc. ; and I remarked that his thoughts 
always were imbued Avith a religious sentiment. The first 
time I ever had a conversation with him on that subject was 
at Ravenna, my native place, a little more than four years 
ago. We were ridiiig together in a pine wood, on a beauti- 
ful spring day, and all was conducive to i-eligious meditation. 
' How,' said he ' raising our eyes to heaven, or directing them 



162 Lord Byron's 

to the eai'th, can we doubt of the existence of God? Or 
how, turning them inward, can we doubt that there is some- 
thing within us more noble and more durable than the clay 
of which we are formed? Those who do not hear, or are 
imwilling to listen to those feelings, must necessarily be of a 
vile nature.' I answered him with all those reasons which 
the superficial philosophy of Helvetius, his disciples and his 
masters, have taught. He replied with very strong argu- 
ments and profound eloquence, and I perceived tliat obstinate 
contradiction on this subject, forcing him to reason upon it, 
gave him pain. This discourse made a deep impression on 
me. 

" Many times, and in various circumstances, I have heard 
him confirm the same sentiments, and he always seemed to 
me to be deeply convinced of their truth. Last year, at 
Genoa, when we were preparing for our journey to Greece, 
he used to converse with me alone for two or three hours 
every evening, seated on the terrace of his palace in Albano, 
in the fine evenings of spring, Avhence there opened a mag- 
nificent view of that superb city and the, adjoining sea. Our 
conversation turned almost always on Greece, for which we 
were so soon to depart, or on religious subjects. Li vari- 
ous ways I heard him confii-m the sentiments which I have 
already mentioned to you. ' Why, then,' said I to him, ' have 
you earned for yourself the name of . impious, and enemy of 
all religious belief, from your writings ?' He answered, ' They 
are not understood, and are wrongly interpreted by the 
malevolent. My object is only to combat hypocrisy, which 
I abhor in every thing, and particularly in religion, and which 
now unfortunately appears to me to be prevalent, . . . and 
for this alone do those to whom you allude wish to render 
me odious, and make me out to be an impious person, and 
a monster of incredulity.' 

" For the Bible he had always a particular respect. It was 
his custom to have it always on his study table, particularly 
during these last months ; and you well know how familiar 
it was to him, since he sometimes knew how to correct your 
inaccurate citations. 

" Fletcher may have informed you about his happy state 
of mind in his last moments. He often repeated subjects 



Eeligious Opinions. 163 

from the Testament, and when, in his last moments, he had 
in vain attempted to make known his Avishes with respect 
to his daughter, and others most dear to him in life, and 
Avhen, on account of the wanderings of his mind, he could not 
succeed in making himself understood, Fletcher answered 
him, ' Nothing is nearer my heart than to execute your wish- 
es ; but, unfortunately, I have scarcely been able to compi-e- 
hend half of them.' ' Is it possible ?' he replied. ' Alas ! it 
is too late. How unfortunate ! Not my will, but the will 
of Grod be done.' There remained to him only a few inter- 
vals of reason and interruptions of delirium, the effect of de- 
termination of blood to the head. 

"He often exj^ressed to me the contempt which he felt 
for those called esprits forts (a set of ignorant egotists, inca- 
pable of any generous action, and hypocrites themselves), in 
their affected contempt of every faith. 

" He professed a complete toleration, and a particular re- 
spect for every sincere conviction. He would have deemed 
it an unpardonable crime to detach any one jDcrsiiaded of the 
truth from his belief, although it might be tinctured with 
absurdity, because he believed it could lead to no other end 
than to render him an infidel." 

After so many proofs of Byron's religious tendencies, is 
it not right to ask, What was that skepticism of which so 
much has been said that it has been almost received as a 
fact by the world generally ? Did he not believe in the ne- 
cessity of religion ? In a God, Creator of all things ? In the 
spirituality, and therefore immortality, of the soul ? In our 
liberty of action, and our moral responsibility ? We have 
seen what others have said on each of these subjects; let us 
now see what he said himself upon the subject. But some 
will object, "Are you going to judge of his views from his 
poetry ? Can one attach much importance to opinions ex- 
pressed in verse? Do not poets often say that which they 
do not think, but which genius inspires them to write ? Are 
such dictates to be considered as their own views ?" Such 
objections may be valid, and we shall so far respect them, 
therefore, as to dismiss Lord Byron's poetry, and treat only 
of that which he has written in prose : we will not consider 
him when under the influence of insj^iration and of genius, 



164 Lord Byron's 

but when given np entirely to the silent examination of his 
conscience. What did his thorough good sense tell him 
about religion in general ? The following note, in which he 
repels the stupid and wicked attacks of Southey, who called 
him a skeptic, will prove it : — 

"One mode of worship yields to another, but there never 
will be a country without a worship of some sort. Some 
will instance France; but the Parisians alone, and a fanat- 
ical faction of them, maintained for a short time the absurd 
dogma of theophilanthropy. If the English Clmrch is up- 
set, it will be by the hands of its own sectaries, not by those 
of skeptics. People are too wise, too well informed, to sub- 
mit to an impious unbelief There may exist a few specula- 
tors without faith ; but they are small in numbers, and their 
opinions, being without enthusiasm or appeal to the passions, 
can not make j^roselytes unless they are persecuted, that be- 
ing the only means of augmenting any sects." 

" ' I am always,' he writes in his memorandum, ' most re- 
ligious ujion a sunshiny day, as if there Avere some association, 
some internal" approach to greater light and purity and the 
kindler of this dark lantern of our existence. 

" ' The night had also a religious influence, and even more 
so when I viewed the moon and stars through Herschel's 
telescope, and saw that they were worlds.' " 

And what thought Byron of the existence of God ? " Sup- 
posing even," he says, " that man existed before God, even 
his higher pre-Adamite supposititious creation must have 
had an origin and a creator, for a creation is a more natural 
imagination than a fortuitous concourse of atoms ; all things 
remount to a fountain, though they may flow to an ocean. 

" If, according to some speculations, you could prove the 
world many thousand years older than the Mosaic chronolo- 
gy, or if j^ou could get rid of Adam and Eve, and the apple, 
and serpent, still Avhat is to be set up in their stead ? or how 
is the difliculty removed ? Things must have had a begin- 
ning, and what matters it when or how ?" 

If Byron did not question the existence of God, did he 
doubt the spirituality and immortality of the soul ? Here 
are some of his ansvvei's: — 

" What is poetry ?" he asked himself in his memorandum, 



Keligious Opinions. 165 

and he replied — "The feeling of a former world and future." 
And further, in the same memorandum : — 

" Of the immortality of the soul, it appears to me that 
there can be little doubt, if we attend to the action of the 
mind for a moment : it is in perpetual activity. I used to 
doubt if, but reflection has taught me better. The stoics 
Epictetus and Aurelius call the present state ' a soul which 
drags a carcass ' — a heavy chain, to be sure, but all chains, 
being material, may be shaken ofl". How far our future life 
will be individual, or, rather, how far it will at all resem- 
ble our present existence, is another question ; but that the 
mind is eternal, seems as probable as that the body is not 
so. Of course, I here venture upon the question without re- 
curring to revelation, which, however, is at least as rational 
a solution of it as any other. A material resurrection seems 
strange and even absurd, except forpurjjoses of punishment: 
and all punishment which is to revenge, rather than correct, 
must be morally wrong : and when the world is at an end, 
what moral or w^arning purpose can eternal tortures answer? 
Human passions have probably disfigured the Divine doc- 
trines here ; but the whole thing is inscrutable." 

And again : — 

" I have often been inclined to materialism in philosophy ; 
but could never bear its introduction into Christianity, which 
appears to me essentially founded upon the soul. For this 
reason, Priestley's 'Christian Materialism' always struck me 
as deadly. Believe the resurrection of the body, if you will, 
but not without a soul. The deuce is in it, if after having had 
a soul (as, surely, the mind, or whatever you call it, is) in this 
world, we must pai't with it in the next, even for an immortal 
materiality ; and I own my partiality for spirit." 

It has already been seen that, in his early youth, he was 
intimately convinced of the immortality of his soul, by the 
fact of the existence of his conscience. But it is equally 
proved that, as his soul became more perf^t, and rose more 
and more toward all that is great and virtuous, his conviction 
of the immortality of the soul became still more certain. 

The beautiful words which he addressed to Mr. Parry, a 
few hours before his agony, confirm our assertions : — 

" Eternity and space are before me ; but on this subject, 



166 Lord Byron's 

thank God, I am hapj^y and at ease. The thought of living 
eternally, of again reviving, is a great pleasure. Christianity 
is the purest and most liberal religion in the world ; but the 
numerous teachers who are continually worrying mankind 
with their denunciations and their doctrines, are the greatest 
enemies of religion. I have read, with more attention than 
half of them, the Book of Christianity, and I admire the lib- 
eral and truly charitable principles which Christ has laid 
down. There are questions connected with this subject, 
which none but Almighty God can solve. Time and space, 
who can conceive ? None but God : on Him I rely." 

If he neither questioned the existence of God nor the 
spirituality and immortality of the soul, did he question our 
liberty of thought, and hence our moral responsibility ? 

To put such a question, is to misunderstand Byron com- 
pletely. Who, more than Byron, ever believed in our right 
of judgment, and proclaimed that right more strenuously 
than he has, in prose and in Averse ? ■ Let any one who has 
read "Manfred," say Avhether a poet ever developed such 
Christian and philosophical views Avith greater energy and 
power. 

Did Lord Byron really question, in his poems, the infinite 
goodness of God, as he has been accused of doing ? Did liis 
doubts and jDerplexities of mind, caused by the terrible knoAvl- 
edge of the existence of evil, ever go beyond the limits of tlie 
doubts Avhich beset the minds of intellectual men, Avhen the 
light of faith fails to aid them in their philosophical research- 
es after truth ? 

When he published his drama, " Cain, a Mystery," he was 
attacked by enemies in the most violent manner. They se- 
lected the arguments put into the mouth of Lucifer, and their 
influence upon Cain, to prove that tliis biblical poem was 
a blasphemous composition, and that its author Avas conse- 
quently deserving of being outlawed, as haAung attempted 
to question the siipreme wisdom of God. But most certain- 
ly Lucifer speaks in the poem as Lucifer should speak, unless, 
indeed, the Ea'II Spirit ought to speak as a theologian, and 
the first assassin as a meek orthodox Christian ? Byron gave 
.them each the language logically most suited to their re- 
spective characters, as Milton did, Avithout, hoAvever, incur- 



Eeligious Opinions. 167 

r'mci; the accusation of impiety. It was argued that Byron 
ouoht, at least, to have introduced some one charged with 
the defense of the right doctrines. But was not the drama 
entitled a Mystery, and was not the title to be justified, as it 
were '? Could he have done otherwise, even if he had wished 
it ever so much ? What could Adam, or even God's angel, 
do better than remain silent in presence of the mental agony 
of Cain, and only advise his bowing to the incom2)rehensi- 
bility of the mystery ? Again, if discussion was fruitful of 
results with Abel, must it be the same with Cain ? Was 
Lord Byron to turn both these personages into theologians, 
ready to discuss any and every metaphysical question, and 
to explain the origin and effects of evil ? Had they done so, 
it is not very likely they would have succeeded in persuad- 
ing Cain of the solidity of their argument, or in dispelling 
the clouds which obscured his mind, and both calm his despair 
and satisfy so inquisitive a nature, influenced and mastered, 
as it was, by evil i^assions. If Lord Byron thought he could 
explain the existence of evil, he would not have entitled his 
poem " a Mystery." But, above all, Lord Byron did not 
wush to outstep the limits of reason to prove still more how 
powerless is reason, alone and unaided, in its endeavors to 
conciliate contradictory attributes. The drama was called 
a Mystery, and Byron wished it to remain such. 

Were some of his biographers right in asserting that he 
had adopted Cuviei''s system ? But Cuvier never denied 
the existence of the Creator, as Moore seems to believe. 
On the contrary, he endeavored to show, even more forcibly, 
the admirable work of the Creation, in order to bring out 
still more in relief the perfection of its Creator. 

In the end, however, Byron ceased to think the existence 
of evil to be so great an injustice to the infinite goodness of 
God, and expressed in his memorandum the opinion " that 
history and experience show that good and evil are counter- 
balanced on earth." 

"Were I to begin life again," he said, in the same memo- 
randum, " I don't think I would change any thing in mine." 
A proof that, without understanding why or wherefore, he 
felt our life on earth to be but the beginning of one which 
is to be continued in another sphere, under the rule of Him 



168 LoED Byron's 

whose gentle hand can be traced in all things created. For 
the same reason he was reconciled to the injustice of man- 
kind, believing this life to be a trial, and bearing it with 
noble courage and fortitude. This mental resignation, how- 
ever, did not pi'event his suffering bitterly in a moral sense. 
All pleasure became a pain to him at the sight of the suffer- 
ings of others. He declared on one occasion, at Cephalonia, 
that if every body was to be damned, and he alone to be 
saved, he would prefer being damned with the rest. This 
excess of generosity may have appeared eccentric, but can 
scarcely seem too exaggerated to those who knew him. 
Certain it is, that to witness the sufferings of others with res- 
ignation, appeared to him to be egotism, and to evince a cold- 
heartedness, which Avould have been unpardonable in his eyes. 
Sometimes even the energy of his Avritings, dictated, as they 
were, by his great generosity of heart, appeared as the revolt 
of a noble nature against the miseries of humanity. 

In such a frame of mind was he when he wrote " Cain," at 
Ravenna, in the midst of people who were for the most part 
unjustly proscribed, and in the midst of sufferings Avhich he 
always tried to alleviate. 

Did he deserve the appellation of skeptic, because he de- 
spised that vain philosophy which believes it can explain all 
things, even God's nature itself, by the sole force of reason ? 
or because, Avhile respecting the dogmas proclaimed by our 
reason and our conscience, he preferred to follow the princi- 
ples of a philosophy that argues with diffidence, and humbly 
OAvns its inability to explain all things, and which caused him 
to exclaim in "Don Juan" — 

"For me, I know naught; notliing I deny, 

Admit, reject, contemn: and what know you, 
Except, perhaps, that you were born to die?" 

But to whom were these lines addressed ? To those meta- 
physicians, of course, whom he would also have denominated 
" men who know nothing, but who, among the truths which 
they ignore, ignore their own ignorance most," — to those ar- 
rogant minds who wish to fathom even the ways which God 
has kept back from us, and who, in seeking to know the w^here- 
fore of all things in creation, are forced to give the name of 
explanation to mere comparisons. 



Keligious Opiniois-s,- 169 

Byron says, in " Don Juan," — 

"Explain me your explanation." 

He addressed himself finally, to all hypocrites and intolerant 
men ; Byron has been called a skeptic, notwithstanding. 

That a sincere and orthodox Catholic, Avho holds that the^ 
negation of a dogma constitutes skepticism, should have called 
Byron a skeptic because he questioned the doctrine of eternal 
punishment, is not to be wondered at ; but what is matter of 
astonishment is, that the reproach Avas addressed to him by 
the writer of " Faust,'' and by the writer of " Elvire," and 
the "Meditations." Yet it is so; and if this psychological 
problem is not yet solved, let others do it, — we can not. 

To sum up, Ave may declare, from Avhat Ave have said, that 
as regards Lord Byron there has been a confusion of Avords, 
and that his skepticism has merely been a natural and inevi- 
table situation in which certain minds who, as it were, are 
the victims of their OAvn contradictory thoughts, are placed, 
notAvithstanding their Avish to believe. Faith, being a part 
of poetical feeling, could not but form a part likewise of By- 
ron's nature, but there existed also in him a great tendency 
to Aveigh the merits of the opinions of others, and consequent- 
ly the desire not to arrive too hastily at conclusions. 

This combination of instinctive faith and a philosophical 
mind could not produce in him the belief in those things 
Avhich did not appear to him to have been first submitted to 
the test of argument, and proved to be just by the convic- 
tions resulting from the test of reasoning to AA^hich they had 
been subjected. It produced, on the contrary, a s^^ecies of 
expectant doubt, a state of mind aAvaiting some decisive ex- 
planation, to reject error and embrace the truth. His skepti- 
cism, therefore, may be said to have been the result of thought, 
not of passion. 

In religion, hoAvever, it must be alloAved that his skepti- 
cism never Avent so far as to cause him to deny its fundamen- 
tal doctrines. These he proclaimed from heartfelt convic- 
tions, and his modest, humble, and manly skepticism may be 
said to have been that of great minds, and his failings, also, 
theirs. Is a day said to be stormy because a fcAV clouds have 
obscured the rays of the sun ? 

H 



170 Lord Byron's 

Is it necessary to say any thing about what he doubted ? 
In showing what lie believed, the exception will be found un- 
necessary. He believed in a Creator, in a spiritual and con- 
sequently immortal soul, but which God can reduce to noth- 
ing, as He created it out of nothing. He believed in liberty 
of thought, in our responsibility, our privileges, our duties, 
and especially in the obligation of practicing the great pre- 
cept which constitutes Christianity ; namely, that of charity 
and devotion toward our neighbor, even to the sacrifice of 
our existence for his sake. He believed in every virtue, but 
his experience forbade his according faith to appearances, and 
trusting in fine phrases. He often found it wise and prudent 
to scrutinize the idol he was called upon to worship, but 
when once that idol had borne the test of scrutiny no Avor- 
sliii> was so sincere. 

" Was he orthodox ?" will again be asked. To such a 
question it may be justly answered, that if he did not enter- 
tain for all the doctrines revealed by the Scriptures that faith 
which he was called upon to possess, it was not for want of 
desiring so powerful an avixiliary to his reason. He felt that, 
however strong reason might be, it always retains a little 
wavering and anxious character ; and, though essentially re- 
ligious at heart, he could not master that blind faith required 
in matters which baftle the eftbrts of reason to prove their 
truth logically and definitively. This is to be accounted for 
by the conflict of his conscience and his philosophical turn 
of mind. Conviction, for him, was a difficult thing to attain. 
Hence for him the difficulty of saying " I believe," and hence 
the accusation of skcj)ticism to Avhich he became liable. He 
wanted proofs of a decisive character, and his doubts belong- 
ed to that school which made Bacon confess that a philoso- 
pher who can doubt, knows more than all the wise men to- 
gether. Byron Avould never have contested absolutely the 
truth of any mystery, but have merely stated that, as long 
as the testimonies of its truth were hidden in obscurity, such 
a mystery must be liable to be questioned. He was Avont to 
add, hoAvever, that the mysteries of religion did not appear to 
him less comprehensible than those of science and of reason. 

As for miracles, hoAV could he think them absurd and im- 
possible, since he admitted the omnipotence of God ? His 



Keligious Opinions. 171 

mind was far too just not to understand that miracles sur- 
round us, even from the first origin of our race. He often 
asked himself, whether the first man could ever have been 
created a child ? " Reason," says a gi-eat Christian philoso- 
pher, " does not require the aid ot the Book of Genesis to be- 
lieve in that miracle." 

One evening at Pisa, in the drawing-room of the Countess 

G , where Byroii Avas wont to spend all his evenings, a 

great discussion arose respecting a certain miracle which was 
said to have taken place at Lucca. 

The miracle had been accompanied by several rather lu- 
dicrous circumstances, and of course laughter was not spared. 
Shelley, who never lost sight of his jihilosopher, treated mir- 
acles as dej^lorable superstitions. Lord Byron laughed at 
the absurdity of tke liistory told, without any malice however. 

Madame G alone did not laugh. " Do you, then, believe 

in that miracle ?" asked Byron. " I do not say I exactly be- 
lieve in that miracle," she replied ; " but I believe in mira- 
cles, since I believe in God and in His omnipotence ; nor 
could I believe that God can be deprived of His liberty, when 
I feel that 1 have mine. Were I no longer to believe in 
miracles, it seems to me I should no longer believe in God, 
and that I should lose my faith." 

Lord Byron stopped joking, and said — 

" Well, after all, the philosophy of common sense is the 
truest and the best." 

The conversation continued, in the jesting tone in which 

it had begun, and 1M. M , an espint fort, went so far as to 

condemn the supernatural in the name of the general and per- 
manent laws which govern nature, and to look upon miracles 
as the legends of a by-gone age, and as errors which afiect 
the ignorant. From what had gone before, he probably fim- 
cied that Byron Avas going to join issue with him. But there 
was often a Avide gulf betAveen the intimate thoughts of By- 
ron and his expressions of them. 

" We alloAv ourselves too often," he said, " to giA'e Avay to 
a jocular mood, and to laugh at every thing, probably because 
God has granted us this faculty to compensate for the diffi- 
culty AA^iich aa'C find in belieA'ing, in the same manner as play- 
things are given to cliildren. But I really do not see Avhy 



172 , LoKD Byron's 

God should be obliged to jireserve in the universe the same 
order which He once established. To whom did He promise 
that He would never change it, either wholly or in part ? 
Who knows whether some day He will not give the moon an 
oval or a square shape instead of a round one ?" 

This he said smiling, but added immediately after, in a 
serious tone : — 

" Those who believe in a God, Creator of the universe, 
can not refuse their belief in the possibility of miracles, for 
they behold in God the first of all miracles." 

Finally, Lord Byron determined himself the limits of 
what he deemed his necessary belief; and remained through- 
out life a stanch supporter of those opinions, but he never 
ceased to evince a tendency to steer clear of intolerance, 
Avhich according to him only brought one»back to total un- 
belief. 

Let us not omit to add that, as he grew older, he saw better 
the arrogant weakness of those who screen themselves under 
the cover of science, and recognized more clearly each day 
the hand of the Creator in the Avorks of nature. 

" Did Lord Byron pray ?" is another objection which will 
be made. 

We have already seen what he thought of prayer; we 
have shown that his poems often took the form of a prayer, 
and we have read with admiration various passages contain- 
ing some most sublime lines which completely answer those 
who accused him of Avant of religion, Avhile they exhibit the 
expansion of his soul toAvard God. 

We also knoAV with Avhat feelings of respect he approach- 
ed places dcA'oted to a religious life, and Avhat charms he 
found in the ceremonies of the Church. All this is proof 
enough, it Avould seem ; but, in any case, Ave must add that 
if his prayers were not those advised by Kennedy, they were 
at least the prayers of a great soul which soars upAvard to 
bow before its Creator. " Outward ceremonies," says Fene- 
lon, " are only tokens of that essential point, the religion of 
the soul, and Byron's prayer Avas rather a thanksgiving than 
a request." — " Li the eyes of God," says some one, " a good 
action is Avorth more than a prayer." 

Such was his mode of communincr Avith God even in his 



Eeligious Opinions. 173 

early youth, but especially in his last moments, which were 
so sublime. Can one doubt, that at that solemn moment his 
greatest desire was to be allowed to live ? He had still to 
reap all the fruits of his sacrifices. His harvest was only 
just beginning to ripen. By dint of heroism, he was at last 
becoming known. He was young, scarcely thirty-six years 
of age, handsome, rich. Rank and genius were his. He was 
beloved by many, notwithstanding a host of jealous rivals ; 
and yet, on the point of losing all these advantages, what was 
his prayer ? Was it egotistical or presumptous ? was it to 
solicit a miracle in his lavor ? No, his last words were those 
of noble resignation. " Let Thy holy will, my God, be done, 
and not mine !" and then absorbed, as it were, in the infinity 
of God's goodness, and, confiding entirely in God's mercy, he 
begged that he might be left alone to sleep quietly and peace- 
fully into eternity. On the very day which brought to us 
the hope of our immortality, he would awake in the bosom 
of God. 



174: Childhood and Youth 



CHAPTER V. 

CHILDHOOD AND YOUTH OF LORD BYRON. 

All Byron's biographers (at least all those who knew him) 
have borne testimony to his great goodness, bnt they have 
not dwelt sufficiently upon this principal feature in his char- 
acter. Biographers generally wish to produce an effect. 
But goodness is not a sufficiently noticeable quality to be 
dilated uponj .it would not repay ambition or curiosity. It 
is a quality mostly attributed to the saints, and a biographer 
prefers dilating upon the defects of his hero, upon some adven- 
ture or scandal — means by which it is easy, with a spark of 
cleverness, to make a monster of a saint: for, alas! the most 
rooted convictions are often sacrificed for the sake of amusing 
a reader who is difficult to please, and of satisfying an editoi*. 

Lord Byron's goodness, however, was so exceptional, and 
contrasted, so strongly with the qualities attributed to him 
by those who only knew him by repute, that, in making an 
exception of him, astonishment, at the very least, might have 
been the result. If we look at him conscientiously in every 
act of his life, in his letters, and in his poetry, we must sym- 
pathize particularly with him. We find that his goodness 
shines as prominently as does his genius, and we feel that it 
can bear any test at any epoch of, alas ! his too short exist- 
ence. As, however, I do not purpose here to write his biog- 
raphy, I shall confine myself merely to a few instances, and 
Avill give only a few proofs taken from his early life. To no 
one can the words of Alfieri be better applied than to By- 
ron : — " He is the continuation of the child " — an idea which 
has been expressed even more elegantly of late by Disraeli, 
in his " Literary Characters :" — 

"As the sun is seen best »t its rising and its setting, so 
men's native dispositions are clearly perceived w^hile they 
ai-e children, and when they are dying." 



Of Lord Byron. 175 

LORD BYEON's childhood. 

Of those wlio have written Byron's life, the best disposed 
among them have not sufficiently noticed his admirable per- 
fection of character Avhen a child, as revealed to lis by sun- 
dry anecdotes and by his own poems, entitled " Hours of 
Idleness :" — 

" There was in his disposition," says Moore, " as appears 
from the concurrent testimony of nurses, tutors, and ail who 
were employed about him, a mixture of affectionate sAveetness 
and playfulness, by which it was impossible not to be attach- 
ed, and which rendered him then, as in his riper years, easily 
manageable by those who loved and understood him suffi- 
ciently to be at once gentle and firm enough for the task. 
The female attendant whom he had taken the most fancy to 
was the youngest of* two sisters, named Mary Gray, and she 
had succeeded in gaining an influence over his mind against 
which he very rarely rebelled." , 

By an accident which occurred at the time of his birth 
one of his feet was twisted out of its natural position, and, to 
restore the limb to shape, expedients were used under the di- 
rection of the celebrated Dr. Hunter. Mary Gra)^, to %honi 
fell the task of putting on the bandages at bed-time, used to 
sing him to sleep, or tell him Scotch ballads and legends, in 
which he delighted, or teach him psalms, and thus lighten 
his pain. Mary Gray was a very pious woman, and she un- 
questionably inspired Byron with that love of the Scriptures 
which he preserved to his last day. She only parted from 
Byron when he was placed at school at Dulwich, in 1800. 
The child loved her as she loved him. He gave Irer his 
watch, and, later, sent her his portrait. Both these treasures 
Were given to Dr. Ewin.g (an enthusiast of Byron, who had 
collected the dying words of Mary Gray, which were all for 
the child she had nursed), by her grateful husband. 

The same gratitude was shown by Byron to Mary Gray's 
sister, who had been his first nursery governess. He wrote 
to her after he had left Scotland, to ask news of her, and to 
announce with delight that he could now put on an ordinary 
shoe — an event, he said, which he had greatly looked forward 
to, and which he was sui'e it would give her pleasure to hear. 



176 Childhood and Youth 

Before going to school at Aberdeen, Byron had two tu- 
tors, Ross and Paterson, both young, intelligent, and ami^-ble 
ecclesiastics, for whom he always entertained a pleasing and 
affectionate remembrance. 

At seven years of age he went to the Aberdeen Grammar 
School, and the general impression which he left there, as 
evinced by the testimony of several of his colleagues who are 
still living, was, says Moore, " that he was quick, courageous, 
passionate, to a remarkable degree venturous and fearless, but 
affectionate and companionable. 

"He was most anxious to distinguish himself among his 
school-fellows by prowess in all sports and exercises, but, 
though quick when he could be persuaded to attend, he was 
in general very low in his class, nor seemed ambitious of be- 
ing promoted higher." 

The anecdotes told of liim at this time all prove his fine 
nature, and show the goodness and greatness of soul which 
characterized him up to his last day. 

All the qualities which arc to shine in the man will be found 
already marked in the child. On one occasion he Avas taken 
to see a piece at the Edinburgh theatre, in which one of the 
actorarpretends that tlie moon is the sun. The child, not- 
withstanding his timidity, was shocked by this insult to his 
understanding, rose from his seat, and cried out, "I assure 
you, my dear sir, that it is the moon." Here, again, we can 
trace that love of truth which in after life made him so coura- 
geous in its proclamation at any cost. 

When, at Aberdeen, he was, on one occasion, styled Dom- 
inus Byron in the school-room, by way of announcing to him 
his accession to the title, the child began to cry. Can not 
these tears be explained by the mixture of pleasure and pain 
which he must have felt at that moment — pleasure at becom- 
ing a peer, and distress at not being able to share this pleas- 
ure with his comrades ? Are they not a prelude of the sac- 
rifice of himself Avhich he afterward made by actually, plac- 
ing himself in the wrong, in order that at the time of his 
greatest triumph his rivals might not be too jealous of him? 

On one occasion, as he was riding with a friend, they ariived 
at the bridge of Balgounie, on the river Dee, and, remember- 
ing suddenly the old ballad which threatens with death the 



Of Lord Byron. 177 

man who passes the bridge first on a pony, Byron stopped 
his comrade, and requested to be allowed to pass first ; be- 
cause if the ballad said true, and that one of them must die, 
it was better, said he, that it should be him, rather than his 
friend, because he had only a mother to mourn his loss, 
whereas his friend had a father and a mother, and the pain 
of his death woiild fall upon two persons instead of upon one. 
Another illustration of that heroic generosity of character of 
which Byron's life oilers so many instances. 

On another occasion he saw a poor woman coming out of 
a bookseller's shop, distressed and mortified at not having 
enough to buy herself the Bible she wanted. The child ran 
after her, brought her back, made her a present of the desired 
book, and, in doing so, obeyed that same craving of the heart 
to do good which placed him all his life at the service of 
others. These instances will suffice at present. 

On his accession to the title, as heir to his great uncle, he 
left Scotland, and was taken to see Newstead Abbey, his fu- 
ture residence. He spent the Avinter at Nottingham, the , 
most important of the toAvns round Newstead. His mother, 
who was blindly fond of him, could not bear to see any phys- 
ical defect in him, however slight. She confided him to a 
quack doctor named Lavender, who promised to cure him, 
while his studies were continued under the direction of a Mr. 
Rogers. The treatment which he had to undergo being both 
painful and tedious, furnishes us wdth the opportunity of ad- 
miring his strength of mind. Mr. Rogers, who had conceived 
a great liking for the child, noticed on one occasion that he 
was suffering. "Pray do not notice it," said Byron, "you 
will see that I shall behave in such a way that you will not 
perceive it." ^ Notwithstanding his own w^ant of skill, Mr. 
Lavender might, perhaps, have cured the child. But Byron, 
who had no faith in him, always found fault with every thing 
he did, and played tricks upon him. 

At last his mother agreed with Lord Carlisle, who was his 
guardian, to take him to London, to be better educated and 
taken care of He was sent to Mr. Glennie's school at Dul- 
wich, and his foot was to be attended to by the famous Dr. 
Baillie. For the first time, then, did Byron leave the home 
where he had been rather spoiled than neglected. 

H 2 



178 Childhood and Youth 

Dr. Gleimie at once took a great fancy to him, made him 
sleep in his own study, and watched with an equal care the 
progress of his studies and the cure of his foot. This latter 
task was no easy one, owing to the restlessness of the child, 
who would join in all the gymnastic exercises suitable to his 
age, whereas absolute repose was prescribed for him. Dr. 
Glennie says, however, that, once back iu the study-room, 
Byron's docility was equal to his vivacity. He had been in- 
sti-ucted according to the mode of teaching adoj^ted at Ab- 
erdeen, and had to retrace his steps, owing to the difference 
of teaching prescribed in English schools. 

"I found him enter upon his tasks," says Dr. Glennie, 
"with alacrity and success. He was playful, good-humor- 
ed, and beloved by his companions. His reading in his- 
tory and poetry was far beyond the usual standard of his 
age, and in my study he found, among other works, a set of 
our poets — from Chaucer to Churchill — which, I am al- 
most tempted to say, he had more than once perused from 
.beginning to end. He showed at this age an intimate ac- 
quaintance with the historical parts of the Holy Scriptures, 
upon which he seemed delighted to converse Math me, 
and reasoned upon the facts contained in the sacred vol- 
ume with every appearance of belief in the divine truths 
which they unfold. That the impressions thus imbibed in 
his boyhood had," notwithstanding the irregularities of his 
after life, sunk deep into his mind, Avill appear, I think, to 
every impartial reader of his works, and I never have been 
able to divest myself of the persuasion, that he must have 
found it difficult to violate the better principles early instill- 
ed into him." 

He remained two years with Dr. Glennie, ^luring which 
time he does not appear to have made great jn-ogress in his 
studies, owing to the too frequent amusements procured for 
him by his over-fond mother. But though Mr. and Mrs. 
Glennie saw the child very seldom after he left them, they 
always remained much attached to him, and followed his ca- 
reer with much interest, owing to the fine qualities which 
they had loved and admired in him as a child. 

At thirteen years old he went to Harrow, the head master 
of which school was Dr. Drury, who at once conceived a great 



Of Lord Byron. 179 

fancy for the boy, and remained attached to him all his life. 
He thus expresses himself Avith regard to Byron : — 

" A degree of shyness hung about him for some time. 
His manner and temper soon convinced me that he might be 
led by a silken string, rather than hj a cable. On that prin- 
ciple I acted." 

To Lord Carlisle's inquiries about Byron, Drury replied: — 
" He has talents, my lord, which will add liTstre to his rank." 

After having been his master he remained his friend, and 
shortly before his death, Byron declared that, of all .the mas- 
ters and friends he ever had, the best was Dr. Drury, for whom 
he should entertain as much regard as he would have done 
for his own father. 

Now that we have passed in review both his tutors and 
his servants ; that we have seen them all, without exception, 
beloved by the child as they loved him, M^e must take a glance 
at his college life, and see how he came to possess such charms 
of manner and of character. Li the youth will appear those 
great qualities which began in the child, and will shine in 
the man. On one occasion he prevented his comrades from 
setting fire to the school, by appealing to their filial love, 
and pointing to the names of their parents on the Avails Avhicli 
they wished to destroy. He thus saved the school. 

"When Lord Byron and Mr. Peel Avere at Harrow to- 
gether," says Moore, " a tyrant some few years older, Avhose 

name Avas N , claimed a right to fag little Peel, Avhicli 

claim Peel resisted. His resistance Avas A'ain, and X not 

only subdued him, but determined also to punish the refrac- 
tory slaA^e by inflicting ^ bastinado on the inner fleshy side 
of the boy's right arm. While the stripes were succeeding 
each other, and poor Peel was Avrithing under them, Byron 
saw and felt for the misery of his friend ; and, although he 

knew he was not strong enough to fight N Avith any 

hope of success, and that it Avas dangerous even to approach 
him, he advanced to the scene of action, and, Avitli a flush 
of rage, tears in his eyes, and a A'oice trembling betAveen 

terror and indignation, asked A'ery humbly if N Avould 

be pleased to tell him how many stripes he meant to inflict ? 
'Why,' returned the executioner, 'you little rascal, what is 
that to yox;?' 'Because, if you please,' said Byron, holding 



180 Childhood and Youth 

out his arm, ' I would take half.' There is a mixture of sim- 
plicity and magnanimity in this little trait which is truly 
heroic." 

At fifteen Byron was still at Harrow. A certain Mr. 
Peel ordered his fag, Lord Gort, to make him some toast for 
tea. The little fag did not do it well, and as a punishment 
had a red-hot iron applied to the palm of his hand. The 
child cried, and the masters requested that he should name 
tlie author of such cruelty. He did not, however, as the ex- 
pulsion of Peel might have resulted from the avowal. 

Byron, highly pleased with this courageous act, went up 
to Lord Gort and said, " You are a brave fellow, and, if you 
like it, I shall take you as my fag, and you will not have to 
suffer any more dll-treatment." 

" I became his fag," says Lord Gort, " and Avas very for- 
tunate in obtaining so good a master, and one Avho constant- 
ly gave me presents as he did. 

" When he gave dinners he always recommended his fog 
to partake of all the delicacies which he had ordered for his 
guests." 

At all times Byron's greatest pleasure was to make peo- 
ple happy, and his conduct to his fags showed the kind heart 
with which through life he acted toward his subordinates. 

His favorite fag at ILnrrow was the Duke of Dorset. 
How much he loved him can be seen in the beautiful lines 
which he addressed to the duke on leaving Harrow, and 
which reveal his noble heart : — 

To THE Duke of Dorset. 
Dorset ! whose early steps w^th mine have stray'd, 
Exploring everj' path of Ida's glade; 
Whom still atlection taught me to defend, 
And made nie less a tyrant than a friend, 
Though the harsh custom of our youthful band 
Bade ikce obej', and gave me to command ; 
• Thee, on whose head a few short years will shower 
The gift of riches and the pride of power ; 
E'en now a name illustrious is thine own, 
Eenown'd in rank, nor far beneath the throne. 
Yet, Dorset, let not this seduce thy soul 
To shun fair science, or evade control, 
Though passive tutors, fearful to dispraise 
The titled child, whose future breath ma}' raise, 
View ducal errors with indulgent e3'es. 
And wiok at faults thev tremble to chastise, 



Of Lord Byron. 181 

When youthful parasites, who bend the knee 
To wealth, their golden idol, not to tliee — 
And even in simple boyhood's opening dawn 
Some slaves are found to flatter and to fawn — 
When these declare, "that pomp alone should wait 
On one by birth predestined to be great; 
That books were only meant for drudging fools, 
That gallant spirits scorn the common rules ;" 
Believe them not ; — they point the path to shame, 
And seek*to blast the honors of thy name. 
Turn to the few in Ida's early throng, 
Whose souls disdain not to condemn the wrong; 
Or if, amid the comrades of tliy youth. 
None dare to raise the sterner voice of truth, 
Ask thine own heart; 'twill bid thee, boy, forbear; 
For well I know tl>at virtue lingers, there. 

Yes! I have mark'd thee many a passing day, 
But now new scenes invite me far awaj' ; 
Yes! I have mark'd within that generous mind 
A soul, if well matured, to bless mankind. 
Ah! though myself by nature haughty', wild. 
Whom Indiscretion liail'd her favorite child ; 
Though every error stamps me for her own, 
And dooms my fall, I fain would fall alone ; 
Though my proud heart no precept now can tame, 
I love the virtues which I can not claim. 

'Tis not enough, with other sons of power, 
To gleam the lambent meteor of an. hour; 
To swell some peerage page in feeble pride, 
With long-drawn names that grace no page beside ; 
Then share with titled crowds the common lot — 
In life just gazed at, in the grave forgot ; 
While naught divides thee from the vulgar dead, 
Except the dull cold stone that hides thy head. 
The mouldering 'scutcheon, or the herald's roll. 
That well-emblazon'd but neglected scroll. 
Where lords, unhonor'd, in the tomb maj"- find 
One spot, to leave a worthless name behind. 
There sleep, unnoticed as the gloomy vaults 
That veil their dust, their follies, and their faults, 
A race, with old armorial lists o'erspread, 
In records destined never to be read. 
Fain would I view thee, with prophetic eyes, 
Exalted more among the good and wise, 
A glorious and a long career pursue. 
As first in rank, the first in talent too : 
Spurn every vice, each little meanness shun ; 
Not Fortune's minion, but her noblest son. 

Turn to the annals of a former day ; 
Bright are the deeds thine earlier sires display. 
One, though a courtier, Ii%'ed a man of worth. 
And call'd, proud boast ! the British drama forth. 



182 Childhood and Youth 

Another view, not less reiiown'd for wit ; 

Alike for courts, and camps, or senates fit; 

Bold in the field, and favor'd by the Nine ; 

In every splendid part ordain'd to shine ; 

Far, far distinguish'd from the glittering throng, 

The pride of princes, and the boast of song. 

Such were thy fathers, thus preserve their name ; 

Not heir to titles onh', but to fame. 

The hour draws nigh, a few brief days will close, 

To me, this little scene of joys and wo?s ; 

Each knell of Time now warns me to resign 

Shades where Hope, Peace, and Friendship all were mine: 

Hope, that could vary like the rainbow's hue. 

And gild their pinions as the moments flew ; 

Peace, that reflection never frown'd away, 

1)V dreams of ill to cloud some future day ; 

Friendship, whose truth let childhood onlj' tell ; 

Alas ! they love not long, who love so well. 

To these adieu ! nor let me linger o'er 

Scenes hail'd, as exiles hail their native shore, 

Receding slowly through the dark-blue deep, 

Beheld by eyes that mourn, yet can not weep. 

Dorset, farewell ! I will not ask one part 

Of sad remembrance in so young a heart ; 

The coming morrow from thy youthful mind 

Will sweep my name, nor leave a trace behind. 

And yet, perhaps, in some maturer year. 

Since chance has thrown us in the self-same sphere, 

Since the same Senate, nay, the same deljate, 

]\Iav one day claim our suff"rage for the State, 

We hence may meet, and pass each other by, 

With faint regard, or cold and distant eye. 

For me, in future, neither friend nor foe, 
A stranger to thyself, thj' weal or woe, 
AVith thee no more again I hope to trace 
The recollection of our early race ; 
No more, as once, in social hours rejoice. 
Or hear, unless in crowds, thy well-known voice: 
Still, if the wishes of a heart untaught 
To veil those feelings which perchance it ought. 
If these — but let me cease the lengthen 'd strain, — 
Oh ! if these wishes are not breathed in vain. 
The guardian seraph who directs thj' fate 
Will leave thee glorious, as he found thee great. 



It was especially at Harrow that Byron contracted those 
friendships which were Hke cravings of his heart, and which, 
although partaking of a passionate character, had nevertheless 
none of the instability which is the characteristic of passion. 

The death of some of his fi'iends, and the coldness of oth- 
ers, caused him the greatest grief, and broke up the illusions 



Of Lord Byron. 183 

of youth, exchanging them for that misanthropy discernible 
in some of his poems, though contrary to his real character. 

For those, on the other hand, who were spared, and re- 
mained faithful to him, Byron preserved through life the 
warmest affection and the tenderest regard ; the principal 
feature of his nature being the unchanging character of his 
sentiments. 

Although he showed at an early age his disposition to a 
poetical turn of mind, by the force of his feelings and by his 
meditatt\'e wanderings — in Scotland among the mountains 
and on the sea-shore at Cheltenham; — by his rapturous ad- 
miration of the setting sun, as well as by the delight which 
he took in the legends told him by his nurses, and the emo- 
tions which he experienced to a. degree which made him lose 
all appetite, all rest, and all peace of mind ; yet no one would 
have believed at that time that a gigantic poetical genius lay 
dormant in so active a nature. Soon, however, did his soul 
light up his intelligence, and obliged him to have recourse to 
his pen to pour out his feelings. From that moment his gen- 
ius spread its roots in his heart, and Harrow became his para- 
dise owing to the affection which he met with there. 

It was at Harrow that he wrote, between his fourteenth 
and eighteenth year, the '' Hours of Idleness, by a Minor," of 
Avhich he had printed at the request of his friends, a few cop- 
ies for private circulation only. These modest poems did not, 
howevei% escape the brutal attacks of critics. Mackenzie, 
however, a man of talent himself, soon discovered that at the 
bottom of these poems there lay the roots of a great poetical 
genius. The " Hours of Idleness " are a treasure of intellect- 
ual and psychological gleanings. They showed man as God 
created him, and before his noble soul, depressed by the inso- 
lence of his enemies and the troubles of life, endeavored to es- 
cape the eyes of the world, or at least of those who could not 
or would not understand him. 

The noblest instincts of human nature shine so conspicu- 
ously in the pages of this little volume, that we thank God 
that he created such a noble mind, while we feel indignant 
toward those who could not appreciate it. But to understand 
him better he must reveal himself, and we shall therefore 
quote a few of his oAvn sayings as a boy. His first gi-ief 



184 Childhood and Youth 

brought forth his first poem. A young cousin of his died, 
and of her death he spoke to this effect in his memorandum : — 

" My first recourse to poetry was due to my passion for 
my cousin Margaret Parker, She was, without doubt, one of 
the most beautiful and ethereal beings I ever knew. I have 
forgotten the lines, but never shall I forget her. I was twelve 
years of age, and she was older than myself by nearly a year. 
I loved her so passionately, that I could neither sleep, nor get 
rest, or eat when thinking of her. She died of consumption, 
and it was at Harrow that I heard both of her illness and 
of her death." 

Then it was that Byron Avrote his first elegy, which he 
characterizes as "very dull;" but it is interesting as his first 
poetical essay, and as the first cry of pain uttered by a child 
who vents his grief in verse, and reveals in it the goodness of 
his heart and the power of his great mind. On a calm and 
dark night he goes to her tomb and strews it with flowers ; 
then, speaking of her virtues, exclaims : — 

"But wherefore weep? Her matchless spirit Soars 
Beyond where splendid shines the orb of day ; 
And weeping angels lead her to those bowers 
Where endless pleasures virtue's deeds repay. 

"And shall presumptuous mortals Heaven arraign, 
And, madly, godlike Providence accuse? 
Ah, no ! far fly from me attempts so vain ; — 
I'll ne'er submission to my God refuse. 

"Yet is remembrance of those virtues dear, 

Yet fresh the memory of that beauteous face, 
Still the}' call forth my warm afVection's tear. 

Still in my heart retain their wonted place." 1802. 

So beautiful a mind, and one so little understood, reveals 
itself more and more in each poem of this first collection ; 
and on this account, rather than because of its poetical merits, 
are the " Hours of Idleness " interesting to the psychological 
biographer of Byron. " Whoever," says Sainte-Beuve, " has 
not watched a youthful talent at its outset, will never form 
for himself a perfect and really true appreciation of it." 

Moore adds: "It is but justice to remark that the early 
verses of Lord Byron give but little promise of those dazzling 
miracles of poesy with which he afterward astonished and 



Of Lord Byron. 185 

enchanted the world, however distinguished they are by ten- 
derness and grace. 

" There is, indeed, one point of view in which these pro- 
ductions are deeply and intrinsically interesting; as faithful 
reflections of his character at that period of life, they enable 
us to judge of what he was before any influences were brought 
to bear iij50n him, and so in them we find him pictured exact- 
ly such as each anecdote of his boyish days exhibits him — 
proud, daring, and passionate — resentful of slight or injustice, 
but still more so in the cause of others than in his own ; and 
yet, with all this vehemence, docile and placable at the least 
touch of a hand authorized by love to guide him. The affec- 
tionateness, indeed, of his disposition, traceable as it is through 
every page of this volume, is yet but faintly done justice to 
even by himself ; his whole youth being from earliest child- 
hood a series of the most passionate attachments, of those 
overflowings of the soul, both in friendship and love, which 
are stiil more rarely responded to than felt, and which, when 
checked or sent back upon the heart, are sure 'to turn into bit- 
terness." 

While his soul expanded with the first rays of love which 
dawned upon it, friendship too began to assert its influence 
over him. But in continuing to observe in him the effects of 
incipient love, let us remark that, while such precocious im- 
pressions are only with others the natural development of 
physical instincts, they were, in Byron, also, the expression of 
a soul that expands, of an amiability, of a tenderness ever on 
the increase. Though sensible to physical beauty as he al- 
ways was through life, his principal attraction, however, was 
in that beauty which expresses the beauty of the soul, without 
which condition no physical perfection commanded his atten- 
tion. We have seen what an ethereal creature Miss Margftret 
Parker was. Miss Chaworth succeeded her in Byron's affec- 
tions, and was his second, if not third love if we notice his 
youthful passion at nine years of age for Maiy Duff. But 
his third love was the occasion of great pain to him. Miss 
Chaworth was heiress to the grounds and property of Annes- 
ley, which were i*i the immediate neighborhood of Newstead. 
Notwithstanding, however, the enmity which had existed be- 
tween the two families for a lonq; time, on account of a duel 



186 Childhood and Youth 

which had resulted in the deuth of Miss Chaworth's grandfa- 
ther, Byron was received most cordially at Annesley. Mrs. 
Chaworth thought that a marriage between her daughter and 
Byron might perhaps some day efface the memory of the feud 
that had existed between their respective families. Byron 
therefore found his school-boy advances encouraged by both 
mother and daughter, and his imagination naturally was kin- 
dled. The result was that Byron fell desperately in love 
with Miss Chaworth ; but he was only fifteen years old, and 
yet an awkward schoolboy, Avith none of that splendid and 
attractive beauty for which he was afterward distinguished. 
Miss Chaworth was three years older, and unfortunately her 
heart was already engaged to the man who, to her misfortune, 
she married the year after. She therefore looked upon Byron 
as a mere child, as a younger brother, and his love almost 
amused her. She, however, not only gave him a ring, her por- 
trait, and some of her hair, but actually carried oa a secret 
correspondence with him. These were the faults for which 
she afterward had to suffer so bitterly. Such a union, howev- 
er, with so great a difference of age, would not have been nat- 
ural. It could only be a dream ; but I shall speak elsewhere* 
of the nature of this attachment, which had its effect upon 
Byron, in order to show the beauty of his soul under another 
asj^ect. I can only add here that he had attributed every 
virtue to this girl whom he afterward styled frivolous and de- 
ceitful. 

On his return to Harrow this love and his passionate 
friendships divided his heart. But when the following vaca- 
tion came, his dream vanished. Miss Chaworth was engaged 
to another, and on his return to Harrow he vainly tried to 
forget her who had deceived and wounded him. Like other 
yoiAg men, he devoted his time during the Harrow or Cam- 
bridge vacations to paying his respects and offering his re- 
gards to numerous belles, whose names ai)pear variously in 
his poems as Emma, Caroline, Helen, and Mary. Moore be- 
lieves them to have been imaginary loves. A slight acquaint- 
ance Avith the liberty enjoyed by young men at English uni- 
versities would lead one to believe these lofes to have been 

* See chapter upon GTenerosity. 



Of Lord Byrox. 187 

any thing but unreal. Tliis can be the more readily believed, 
as Byron always sought in reality the objects which he after- 
ward idealized. He always required some earthly support, 
though the slightest, as Moore observes, in speaking of the 
charming lines with w^hich his love for Miss Chaworth in- 
spired him, at the time when the recollection of it made him 
compare his misfortune in marrying Miss Milbank, with the 
happier lot which might have been his had he married Miss 
Cliaworth. Whether these loves were real or not, however, 
it must be borne in mind that Byron deemed all physical 
beauty to be nothing if unaccompanied by moral beauty. 
Thus, in speaking of a vain young girl, he exclaims : — 

"One wlio is thus from nature vain, 
I pit}', but I can not love." 

And to Miss N. N , who was exquisitely beatitiful, but 

in whose eyes earthly passion shone too powerfully, he says : — 

" Oh, did those eyes, instead of iire, 

AVith liriglit but mild aftection shine, 
ThouLrh tliey might kindle less desire, 

Love, more than mortal, would lie thine. 
For thou art f'orm'd so heavenly fail-, 

Ilowe'er those orbs may -wildlj' beam, 
We must admire, but still despair ; 

That fatal glance forbids esteem." 

In a letter to Miss Pigot, which he wrote from Cambridge, 
he says : — 

" Saw a girl at St. Mary's the image of Ann ; thought 

it was her — all in the wrong — the lady stared, so did I — I 
blushed, so did not the lady — sad thing — wish women had 
more modesty." 

On awaking from his dream, and on finding that the jew- 
els with which he had believed Mary's nature to be adorned 
were of his own creation, he sought his consolation in friend- 
ship. His heart, which was essentially a loving one, could 
not be consoled except by love, and Harrow, to use his own 
expressions, became a paradise to him. In tracing the pict- 
ure of Tasso's infancy he has draAvn a picture of himself: — 

'• From my veiy birth 
My sobI was drunk with love, which did pervade 
And mingle with whatever I saw on earth •, 
Of objects all inanimate I made 
Idols, and out of wild and lonely flowers, 



188 Childhood and Youth 

And rocks, whereby they grew, a paradise 
Where I did lay me down within the shade 
Of waving trees, and dreamed uncounted liours, 
Though I was chid for wandering " 

This sentiment of friendship, which is always more pow- 
erful in England than on the Continent, owing to the system 
of education which takes children away from their parents at 
an early age, was keenly developed in Byron, whose affec- 
tionate disposition wanted something to make up for the_ 
privation of a father's and a brother's .love. In his pure and 
passionate heart friendship and love became mixed : his love 
partook of the purity of friendship, and his friendships of all 
the ardor of love. 

But to return to his fourteenth year. While expressing 
in verse his love for his cousin, he expressed at the same time 
in poetry the strong friendship he had conceived, even before 
gohig to Harrow, for a boy who had been his companion. 

This boy, who had a most amiable, good, and virtuous 
disposition, was the son of one of his tenants at Newstead, 
Aristocratic prejudices ran high in England, and this friend- 
ship of Byron for a commoner was sure to call forth the 
raillery of some of his companions, Notwithstanding this, 
Byron, at twelve years and a half old, replied in these terms 
to the mockery of others : — 

To E . 

Let Folly smile to view the names 

Of thee and me in friendship twined ; 

Yet Virtue will have greater claims 

To love, than rank with vice combined. 

And though unequal is thy fate. 

Since title deck'd my higher birth ! 
Yet envy not this gaudy state ; 

Thine is the pride of modest worth. 

Our souls at least congenial meet, 

Nor can thy lot my rank disgrace ; 
Oui- intercourse is not less sweet, 

Since worth of rank supplies the place. 

What noble views in a child of twelve ! How well one feels 
that, whatever may be his fate, such a nature will never lose 
its independence, nor allow prejudice to carry it beyond the 
limits of honor and of justice, and that its device will always 



Of Lord Byron. 189 

be, ".Fills ce que dols, aclmenne que pourraP " I do what I 
ought, come Avhat may." 

At thirteen he wrote some Unes in which he seemed to 
have a kind of presentiment of the glory that awaited him, and, 
at any rate, in which he disjDlayed his resolve to desen'e it : — 

A Fragment. 

When to their any hall, my fathers' voice 
Shall call my spirit, joyful in their choice; 
When, poised upon the gale, my form shall ride, 
Or, dark in mist, descend the mountain's side; 
Oh ! may mj' shade behold no sculptured urns 
To mark the spot where earth to earth returns! 
No lengthen'd scroll, no praise-encumber'd stone ; 
My epitaph shall be vci\ name alone : 
If that with honor fail to crown my clay, 
Oh ! may no other fame my deeds repay ! 
That, only that, shall single out the spot ; 
By that remember'd, or with that forgot. 

Again, at thirteen, a visit to Newstead inspired him with 
the following beautiful lines : — 

Ox Leaving Newstead Abbey. 
"Why dost thou build the hall, son of the winged.days ? Thou lookest from thy tower 
to-day; yet a few years, and the blast of the deeert comes, it liowls in thy empty court." 

^OSSIAN. 

Through thy battlements, Newstead, the hollow winds whistle ; 

Thou, the hall of vc\\ fathers, art gone to decay : 
In thy once smiling garden, the hemlock and thistle 

Have choked up the rose which late bloom'd in the way. 

Of the inail-cover'd Barons, who proudly to battle 
Led their vassals from Europe to Palestine's plain, 

The escutcheon and shield, which with every blast rattle. 
Are the onl_v sad vestiges now that remain. 

No more doth old Robert, with harp-stringing numbers, 
Raise a flame in the breast foi the war-laurell'd wreatii 

Near Askalon's towers John of Horistan slumbers. 
Unnerved is the hand of his minstrel by death. 

Paul and Hubert, too, sleep in the valley of Cressy ; 

For the. safety of Edward and England they fell : 
My fathers ! the tears of your country' redress j'e ; 

How 3'ou fought, how you died, still her annals can tell. 

On Marston, with Rupert, 'gainst traitors contending,* 
Four brothers enrich 'd with their blood the bleak field ; 

For the rights of a monarch their country defending, 
Till death their attachment to royaltj' seal'd. 

* Marston Moor, where the adherents of Charles I. were defeated. Prince 
Rupert, son of the Elector Palatine, and nephew to Charles I. He afterward 
commanded the fleet in the reign of Charles 1 1. 



190 Childhood xVnd Youth 

Shades of heroes, farewell ! your descendant departing 
From the seat of his ancestors, bids you adieu ! 

Abroad, or at home, your remembrance imparting 
New courage, he'll think upon glor^' and you. 

Though a tear dim his eye at this sad separation, 

•'TIS nature, not fear, tliat excites his regret; 

Far distant he goes, with the same emulation, 

The fame of his fathers he ne'er can forget. 

That fame and that memory still will he cherish; 

He vows that he ne'er will disgrace your renown : 
Like you will he live, or like you will he perish : 

When dccay'd, may he mingle his dust with your own ! 

When only fourteen his tenant friend dies, and Byron wrote 
his epitaph, in which, even at that early age (thirteen and a 
half), he particularly mentions his friend's virtues : — 

EriTATH ox .A Friend. 

" 'AcTi/p rcplv jiev £?iajx'K€Q hi ^uolciv ewo^." — La'ertius. 

Oh, Friend ! forever loved, forever dear! 
What fruitless tears have bathed thy honor'd bier! 
What sighs re-echo'd to thy parting breath. 
While thou wast struggling in the pangs of death ! 
Could tears retard the tyrant in his course; 
Could sighs avert his dart's relentless force ; 
Could youth and virtue claim a short delay. 
Or beauty charm the spectre from his prey ; 
Thou still hadst lived to bless my aching sight. 
Thy comrade's honor and thy friend's delight. 
If yet thy gentle spirit hover nigh 
The spot where now thj' mouldering ashes lie, 
.Here wilt thou read, recorded on my heart, 
A grief too deep to trust the sculptor's art. 
No marble marks thy couch of lowly sleep, 
But living statues there are seen to Aveep; 
Affliction's semblance bends not o'er thy tomb, 
Affliction's self deplores thy youthful doom. 
What though thy sire lament his failing line, 
A father's soitows can not equal mine ! 
Though none, like thee, his dying hour will che?r. 
Yet other offspring soothe his anguish here : 
But who with me shall hold thy former place ? 
Thine image, what new friendship can efi"ace? 
Ah, none ! — a father's tears will cease to flow, 
Time will assuage an infant brother's woe ; 
To all, save one, is consolation knoAvn, 
While solitary friendship sighs alone. 

Other friends succeeded his earliest one and consoled him 
for his loss. At Harrow, those he loved best were Wingfield, 
Tattersall, Clare, Delaware, and Long, 



Of Lord Byeon. 191 

His great heart sought to express in verse what it felt for 
each of thera. But it is observable that what touched him 
most Avas the excellence of the qualities both of the mind and 
soul of those he loved. To prove this I shall quote in part a 
poem which he wrote shortly after leaving Harrow for Cam- 
bridge, entitled " Childish Recollections." After giving a 
picture of his life at Harrow in the midst of his companions, 
and after describing very freshly and vividly the scene when 
he was chosen Captain of the School, he exclaims : — 

"Dear lionest race ! though now we meet no more, 
One last long look on what we were before — 
Our first kind greetings, and our last adieu — 
Drew tears IVoni eyes unused to weep with you. 
Through splendid circles, fashion's gaudy world, 

• Where foll}''s glaring standard waves unfurl'd, 
I phjnged to drown in aioise my fond, regret, 
And all I sought or hoped was to forget. 
Vain wish ! if chance some well-remember'd face, 
Some old companion of my early race. 
Advanced to claim his friend with honest joy, 
Sly ej'es, my heart, proclaim 'd me still a boy ; 
The glittering scene, the fluttering groups around, 
Were quite forgotten when my. friend was found ; 
The smiles of beauty — (for, alas! I've known 
What 'tis to bend before Love's mighty throne) — 
The smiles of beauty, though those smiles were dear, 
Could hardly charm me, when that friend was neai'; 
My thoughts bewilder'd in the fond surprise, 
The woods of Ida danced before my eyes; 
I saw the sprightly wand'rers pour along, 
I saw and join'd again the joyous throng; 
Panting, again I traced her lofty grove, 
And friendship's feelings triumpli'd over love." 

After deploring his fate : — 

' ' Stern Death forbade my orphan youth to share 
The tender guidance of a father's care. 
* ***** 

"What brother springs a brother's love to seek.' 
AVhat sister's gentle kiss has prest my cheek? 
****** 

"Thus must I cling to some endearing hand, 
And none more dear than Ida's social band :" — 

he goes on to name his dearest comrades, giving them each 
a fictitious name. Alonzo is Wingfield ; Davus, Tattersall ; 
Lycus, Lord Clare: Euryalus, Lord Delaware; and Cleon, 
Lon!]c : — 



192 Childhood* AND Youth 

"Alon^o! best and dearast of ni}' friends, 
Thy name ennobles him who thus commends: 
From this fond tribute thou canst gain no praise: 
The praise is his who now that tribute pays. 
Oh ! in the promise of thy early youth, 
If hope anticipate the words of truth, 
Some loftier bard shall sing thy glorious name. 
To build his own upon thy deathless fame. 
. Friend of my heart, and Ibremost of the list 
Of those with whom I lived supremelj' blest. 
Oft have we drain'd the font of ancient lore; 
Though drinking deeply, thirsting still the more. 
Yet, when confinement's lingering hour was done, 
Our sports, our studies, and our souls were one: 
Together we impell'd the flying ball ; 
Together waited in our tutor's hall ; 
Together join'd in cricket's manly toil, 
Or shared the produce of the river's spoil ; 
Or, plunging from the green declining shore. 
Our pliant limbs the buoyant billows bore; 
In every element, unchanged, the same, 
All, all that brother's should be, but the name. 

Nor yet are you forgof, my jocund boy I 
Davus, the harbinger of childish joy ; 
Forever foremost in the ranks of fun. 
The laughing herald of the harmless pun ; 
Yet with a breast of such materials made — 
Anxious to please, of pleasing half afraid ; 
Candid and liberal, with a heart of steel 
In danger's path, though not untaught to feel. 
Still I remember, in the factious strife. 
The rustic's musket aim'd against mj' life: 
High poised in air the massy weapon hung, 
A cry of horror burst from every tongue ; 
While I, in combat with another foe. 
Fought on, unconscious of th' impending blow ; 
Your arm, brave boy, arrested his career — 
Forward you sprung, insensible to fear; 
Disarm'd and baffled by your conquering hand, 
The grovelling savage roll'd upon the. sand: 
An act like this, can simple thanks repay.' 
Or all the labors of a grateful lay? 
Oh no ! whene'er my breast forgets the deed. 
That instant, Davus, it deserves to bleed. 

"Lycus! on me thy claims are justly great: 
Thy niilder virtues could my muse relate. 
To thee alone, unrivall'd, would belong 
The feeble efforts of my lengthen'd song. 
AVell canst thou boast, to lead in sciates fit, 
A Spartan firmness with Athenian wit: 
Though yet in embr^'o these perfections shine, 
Lycus! th}' father's fame will soon be thine. 
Where learning nurtures the superior mind. 
What may we hope from genius thus refin'd! 



Of Lokd Byron. 193 

When time at length matures th}' growing years, 
How wilt thou tower above thy fellow-peers! 
Prudence and sense, a spirit bold and free, 
With honor's soul, united, beam in thee. 

"Shall fair Euryalus pass by unsung.' 
From ancient lineage, not unworthy sprung: 
"What though one sad dissension bade us part ? 
That name is yet embalm'd Avithin my heart; 
Yet at the mention does that heart rebound. 
And palpitate, responsive to the sound. 
Envy dissolved our ties, and not our will : 
We once were friends, — I'll tliink we are so still, 
A form unmatch'd in nature's partial mould, 
A heart untainted, we in thee behold: 
Yet not the senate's thunder thou shalt wield, 
Nor seek for glory in the tented field ; 
To minds of ruder texture these be given — 
Thy soul shall nearer soar its native heaven. 
Ilaph', in polish'd courts might be thy seat, 
But that thy tongue could never forge deceit: 
The courtier's supple bow and sneering smile, 
The flow of compliment, the slippery wile, 
Would make that breast with indignation burn. 
And all the glittering snares to tempt thee spurn. 
Domestic happiness will stamp thy fate ; 
Sacred to love, unclouded e'er by hate ; 
Tlie world admire thee, and thy friends adore ; 
Ambition's slave fllone would toil for more. 

" Now last, but nearest, of the social band. 
See honest, open, generous Cleon stand ; 
With scarce one speck to cloud the pleasing scene. 
No vice degrades that purest soul serene. 
On the same day our studious race begun. 
On the same day our studious race was run ; 
Thus side by side we pass'd our first career. 
Thus side by side we strove for many a year; 
At last concluded our scholastic life. 
We neither conquer'd in the classic strife: 
As speakers, each supports an equal name,* 
And crowds allow to both a partial fame: 
To soothe a youthful rival's early pride. 
Though Cleon's candor would the palm divide. 
Yet candor's self compels me now to own , 

Justice awards it to my friend alone. ^ 

" Oh ! friends regretted, scenes forever dear, 
Eemembrance hails j'ou with her warmest tear! 
Drooping, she bends o'er pensive Fancy's lU'n, 
To trace the hours which never can return ; 
Yet with the retrospection loves to dwell. 
And soothe the sorrows of her last farewell I 

* This alludes to the public speeches delivered at the school where the author 
was educated. 

I 



194 Childhood and Youth 

Yet greets the triumph of mj' boyish mind, 

As infant laurels round my head were twined, 

"When Probus' praise repaid m}' 13'ric song, 

Or placed me higher in the studious throng; 

Or when my first harangue received applause, 

His sage instruction the primeval cause, 

What gratitude to him my soul possest, 

While hope of dawning honors fill'd ra}' breast ! 

For all my humble fame, to him alone 

Tlie praise is due, who made that fame niy own. 

Oh ! could I soar above these feeble lays, 

These j'oung effusions of my earlj' days. 

To him my muse her noblest strain would give : 

The song might perish, but the theme might live. 

Yet why for him the needless verse essay? 

His honored name requires no vain display : 

By every son of grateful Ida blest. 

It finds an echo in each youthful breast ; 

A fame beyond the glories of the proud. 

Or all the plaudits of the venal crowd. 

" Ida ! not yet exhausted is the theme. 
Nor closed the progress of my youthful dream. 
How manjf a friend deserves the grateful strain! 
What scenes of childhood still unsung remain! 
Yet let me hush this echo of the past, 
This parting song, the dearest and the last ; 
And brood in secret o'er those hours of joy, 
To mo a silent and a sweet employ," 
While, future hope and fear alike unknown, 
I think with pleasure on the past alone ; 
Yes, to the past alone my heart confine, 
And chase the phantom of what once was mine. 

"Ida! still o'er thy hills in joy preside, 
And proudly steer through time's eventful tide ; 
Still may tin' blooming sons thj^ name revere, 
Smile in thy bower, but quit thee with a tear, — 
That tear, pei'haps, the fondest which will tlov/ 
O'er their last scene of happiness below. 
Tell me, ye hoarj' few, who glide along. 
Tile feeble veterans of some former throng, 
Whose friends, like autumn leaves by tempests whirl'd, 
Are swept forever from this busy world; 
Revolve the fleeting moments of your youth. 
While Care as yet withheld her venom'd tooth ; 
Say if remembrance days like these endears 
Bej'ond the rapture of succeeding years ? 
Say, can ambition's fever'd dream bestow 
So sweet a balm to soothe your hours of woe? 
Can treasures, hoarded for some thankless son, 
Can royal smiles, or wreaths by slaughter won, 
Can stai's or ermine, man's maturer toj's 
(For glittering bawbles are not left to boys). 
Recall one scene so much beloved to view 
As those where Youth her garland twined for you ? 



Of Lord Byrox, 195 

All, no! aniM the gloomy calm of age 

You turn with faltcriiiy hand life's varied page ; 

Peruse the record of your dnys on earth, 

Unsullied only where it marks your birth ; 

Still lingering pause above cacli ciiecker'd leaf, 

And blot M-ith tears the sable lines of giief; 

When Passion o'er the theme her mantle threw, 

Or weeping Yirtue sigh'd a faint adieu ; 

But bless tlie scroll which fairer words adorn, 

Traced by the rosy finger of the morn ; 

Wlien Friendship -bow'd before the slirine of Truth, 

And Love, without his pinion, smiled on youth." 

On leaving Harrow and his best friends, Byron felt that 
he was saying adieu to youth and to its pleasures, and he was 
as yet unable to replace these by the feasts of the raind. 
This filled Ills heart with regret in addition to the sorrows 
which he experienced by those reflections upon existence 
Avhich are common to all poetical natures. The cold disci- 
pline of Cambridge fell like ice upon his warm nature. He 
fell ill, and, by way of seeking a relief to the oppression of 
his mind, he wrote the above transcribed poem, 

Harrow is called Ida, as his friends are denominated by 
fictitious names. To the college itself, and to the recollections 
which it brought back to his memory of physical and mental 
suffering, he addresses himself : — , 

"Ida! blest spot, where Science holds her reign, 
How joyous once I join'd thy youthful train! 
Bright in idea gleams thj' lofty spire, 
Again I mingle with thy plaj'ful quire. 
****** 

My Avonted haunts, my scenes of joy and woe. 
Each early boyish friend, or youthful foe ; 
Our feuds dissolved, but not my friendship past, 
I bless the former, and forgive the last." 

The same kind, affectionate disposition can be traced in all 
his other poems, together with those well-inculcated notions 
of God's justice, wisdom, and mercy, of toleration and forgive- 
ness, of hatred of falsehood and contempt of prejudices, which 
never abandoned him throughout his life. 

I really pity those Avho could read " The Tear " without 
being touched by its simple, plaintive style, written in the 
tenderest strain, or "L'Amitie est I'Amour sans Ailes," or 
the lines to the Duke of Dorset on leaving Harrow, or the 
" Prayer of Nature," or his stanzas to Lord Clare, to Lor<l 



196 Childhood and Youth 

Delaware, to Edward Long, or his generous forgiveness of 
S s Chaworth ; or, again, his Unes on believing that he ™ 
.oincr to die, his answer to a poem called « The Common Lot, 
his i^eply to Dr. Beecher, and, finally, his address to a compan- 
ion whose conduct obliged him to withdraw hxs friendship :- 

" What friend for thee, howe'er inclined, 
Will deign to own a kindred care ? 
Who will debase his manly mind. 

For friendship every fool may share? 

"In time forbear; amid the throng 

No more so base a thing be seen; 
No more so idly pass along ; 

B3 something, any thing, but-mean. 

Since our object is to show'in these ^^^^^ .«? ^^^j^^J^^ 
mind its natural beauty, and not that genius which js shoitly 
to be developed by contact with the troubles ^id pams of 
this life, it may not be irrelevant to our B;^^3ec to give m 
parts, if not entirely, some of the poems which he NMote at 
this time : — 

The Tear. 

"O lachrymarum fons, tenero sacros 
Ducentium ortus ex aniino; quater 
• Felix ! in imo qui scatentem 

Pectore te, pia Nymplia, eensit."— Gray. 

When Friendship or Love our sympathies move, 

When truth in a glance should appear. 
The lips may beguile with a dimple or smile. 
But the test of affection's a Tear. 

Too oft is a smile but the hypocrite's wile. 

To mask detestation or fear; 
Give me the soft sigh, while the soul-tcUing eye 

Is dimm'd for a time with a Tear. 

Mild Charity's glow, to us mortals below. 

Shows tlie soul from barbarity clear ;_ 
Compassion will melt where this virtue is felt, 

And its dew is diffused in a Tear. 

The man doom'd to sail with the blast of the gale, 

Through billows Atlantic to steer. 
As he bends o'er the wave which may soon be his grave, 

The green sparkles bright with a Tear. 
The soldier braves death for a fanciful wreath 

In glorv's romantic career ; 
But he raises the foe when in battle laid low, 

And bathes every Avound with a Tear. 



Of Lord Byron. 197 

If with higli-bounding pride he return to his bride, 

Renouncing the gore-crimson'd spear, 
All his toils are repaid, when, embracing the maid. 

From her ej'elid he kisses the Tear. 

Sweet scene of my youth I seat of Friendship and Truth,* 

Where love chased each fast-fleeting j'ear, 
Loth to leave thee, I mourn'd, for a last look I turn'd, 
But thy spire was scarce seen througli a Tear. 

Though my vows I can pour to my Mary no more. 

My Jlary to love once so deal', 
In the shade of her bower I remember the hour 

She rewarded those vows with a Tear. 

By another possest, she may live ever blest! 

Her name still my heart must revere : 
With a sigh I resign what I once thought was mine. 

And forgive her deceit with a Tear. 

Ye friends of my heart, ere f'-om }-ou I depart, 

This hope to my breast is most near: 
If again we shall meet in this rural retreat, " 

May we meet as we part, with a Tear. 

When my soul wings her flight to the regions of night, 

And my corse shall recline on its bier. 
As ye pass by the tomb where my ashes consume, 

•Oh ! moisten their dust with a Tear. 

May no marble bestow the splendor of woe, 

Wliich the children of vanity rear ; 
No fiction of fame shall 'blazonmy n..me, 

All I ask— all I wish— is a Tear. 



L'Amitie est L'Amour saxs Ailes. 

Why should my anxious breast repine, 

Because my youth is fled? 
Days of delight may still be mine ; . 

Affection is not dead. 
In tracing back the years of youth, 
One firm record, one lasting truth. 

Celestial consolation brings; 
Bear it, ye breezes, to the seat, 
Where first my heart responsive beat, 

" Friendship is Love without his wings !' 

Through few, but deeply checker'd years, 
A\ hat moments have been mine! 

Now half-obscured by clouds of tears. 
Now bright in rays divine; 



* Harrow. 



198 Childhood and Youth 

Howe'er my future doom be cast, 
My soul enraptured with the past, 

To one idea fondly clings ; 
Friendship ! that thought is all thine own. 
Worth worlds of bliss, that thought alone — 

"Friendship is Love without his wings!" 

Where j-onder yew-trees lightly wave 

Their branches on the gale, 
Unheeded heaves a simple grave, 

Which tells the common tale ; 
Round this unconscious schoolboj's stray, 
Till the dull knell of childish play 

From j'onder studious mansion rings; 
But here when'er my footsteps move. 
My silent tears too plainly prove 

"Friendship is I.ovc without his wings!" 
• 
01), Love! before thy glowing shrine 

Mj' early vows were paid ; 
• My hopes, my dreams, mi^ heart was thine, 

But these are now decay 'd ; 
For thine are pinions like the wind, 
No trace of thee remains behind. 

Except, alas ! thy jealous stings. 
Away, away ! delusive power, 
Thou shalt not,haunt my coining hour; 

Unless, indeed, without thy wings. 

Seat of my youth ! thy distant spire 

Recalls each scene of joy ; 
My bosom glows with former fire. 

In mind again a bo}'. 
Thy grove of ekns, tliy verdant hill 
Thy every path delights me still, 

Each flower a double fragrance flings; 
Again, as once, in converse gay. 
Each dear associate seems to say, 

"Friendship is Love without his wings!" 

My Lycus ! wherefore dost thou weep ? 

" Thy falling tears restrain ; 
Aftection for a time may sleep. 

But, oh ! 'twill wake again. 
Think, think, my friend, when next we meet, 
Our long-wish'd interview, how sweet ! 

From this my hope of rapture springs ; 
While youthful hearts thus fondly swell. 
Absence, my friend, can only tell, 

"Friendship is Love without his wings!" 

In one, and one alone deceived. 

Did I my error mourn ? 
No — from oppressive bonds relieved, 

I left the wretch to scorn. 



Of Lord Byron. 199 

I turn'd to those my cluldhood knew, 
AVith feelings warm, with bosoms true, 

Twined with my heart's according strings; 
' And till those vital chords shall break, 

For none but these my breast shall wake 
Friendship, the power deprived of wings ! 

Ye few! mj' soul, my life is yours, 

My memory and my hope ; 
Your worth a lasting love insures, 

Unfetter'd in its scope ; 
From smooth deceit and terror sprung 
With aspect fair and honey'd tongue. 

Let Adulation wait on kings ; 
With joy elate, by snares beset. 
We, we, my friends, can ne'er forget 

"Friendship is Love without his wings!" 

Fictions and dreams inspire the bard 
Who rolls the epic song ; 

Friendship and truth be my reward- 
To me no bays belong ; 

If laurell'd Fame but dwells with lies. 

Me the enchantress ever flies. 

Whose heart and not whose fancy sings; 

Simple and young, I dare not feign ; 

Mine be the rude yet heartfelt strain, 

"Friendship is Love without his wings!" 

Dccemher, 1806. 

These early j)oeins are well characterized by the impression 
which they produced upon Sir Robert Dallas, a man of taste 
and talent, who, though a bigot and a prey to prejudices of all 
kinds, hastened, nevertheless, after reading them, to compli- 
ment the author in the following words : — " Your poems are 
not only beautiful as compositions, but they also denote an 
honorable and upright heart, and one prone to virtue." 

This eulogium is well deserved, and I pity those who could 
read the " Hours of Idleness " Avithout liking their youthful 
writer. If we had space enough, we fain would follow the 
young man from Cambridge to the mysterious Abbey of New- 
stead, where he loved to invite his friends and institute with 
them- a monastery of which he proclaimed himself the Abbot 
— an amusement really most innocent in itself, and which 
bigotry and folly alone could consider reprehensible. With 
what pleasure he would show that in the monastery of New- 
stead its abbot lived the simplest and most austere existence, 
— " a life of study," as Washington Irving describes it, from 



200 Childhood and Youth of Lord Byrox. 

what he heard Nanna Smyth say of it some years after By- 
ron's death. How delighted we should be to follow liim in 
his first travels in search of experience of life, and when his 
genius revealed itself in that light which was shortly to make 
him the idol of the public and the hatred of the envious. We 
could show him to have been always the same kind-hearted 
man, by whom severity and injustice were never had recourse 
to except against himself, and whose melancholy Avas too often 
the result of broken illusions [\nd disappointments. His sim- 
ple and noble character, having always before it an. ideal per- 
fection, perpetually by comparison, thought itself at fault ; 
and the world, who could not comprehend the exquisite deli- 
cacy of his mind, took for granted the rejijutation he gave liim- 
self, and made him a martyr till heaAen should give him time 
toHbecome a saint. 



The Feiendships of Lokd Byron. 201 



CHAPTER VI. 

THE FRIENDSHIPS OF LORD BYRO>r. 

The extraordinavy part which friendship played in Lord 
Byron's life is another proof of his goodness. His friendships 
may be divided into two categories: the friendshijjs of his 
heart, and those of his mind. To the first class belong those 
which he made at Harrow and in liis early Cambridge days, 
while his later acquaintances at the University matured into 
friends of the second category. These had great influence 
over his mind. The names of those of the first category who 
were dearest to him, arid who were alive when he left Harrow 
for Cambridge (for he had lost some very intimate friends 
while still at Harrow, and among these Curzon), Avere — 

WiNGFiELD. Clare. 

Delaware. . Long. 

Tattersall. Eddlestox. 

Harness. 
I will say a word of each, so as to shoAV that Byron in the 
selection of his friends was guided instinctively by the quali- 
ties of those he loved. 

WINGFIELD. 

The Hon. John Wingfield, of the Coldstream Guards, was 
a brother of Richard, fourth Viscount Powerscourt, and died 
of fever at Coimbra, on the 14th of May, 1811, in his 20th 
year. ' 

" Of all beings on earth," says Byron, " I was perhaps at 
one time more attached to poor Wingfield than to any. I 
knew him during the best j^art of his life and the happiest 
portion of mine." 

When he heard of the death of this beloved companion of 

I 2 



202 The Friendships of Lord Byron. 

his youth, he added the two following stanzas to the first can- 
to of " Childe Harold :" 



"And thou, my friend! — since unavailing woe 
Bursts from ni}^ heart, and mingles with the strain- 
Had the sword laid thee with the mighty low, 
Pride miglit forbid e'en Friendship to complain : 
But thus unlaurell'd to descend in vain, 
Bv all forgotten, save the loneh' breast, 
And mix unbleeding with the boasted slain, 
While Glory crowns so many a meaner crest ! 
What hadst thou done, to sink so peacefully to rest? 



" Oh. known the earliest, and esteem'd the most ! 

Dear to a heart where nauglit was left so dear ! 

Though to my hopeless days forever lost, 

In dreams deny me not to see thee here! 

And Morn in secret shall renew the tear 

Of Consciousness awaking to her woes, 

And Fancy hover o'er tlij' bloodless bier, 

Till ni}' frail frame return to whence it rose, 
And mourn'd and mourner lie united in repose." 

Writing to Dallas on the Vth of August, 1812, he says, 
" Wingfield was among my best and dearest friends ; one of 
the very few I can never regret to have loved. ' And on the 
Tth of September, speaking of the death of MattheAVS, in whom 
he said he had lost a triend and a guide, he wrote to Dallas 
to say : " In Wingfield I have lost a friend only ; but one I 
could have wished to precede in his long journey." 

TATTERSALL (dAVLTs). 

The Rev. John Cecil Tattersall, B.A., of Christ Church, 
Oxford, died on the 8th of October, 1812, aged 24. 

" His knowledge," says a writer in the " Gentleman's Mag- 
azine," " Avas extensive and deep ; his affections were sincere 
and great. By his extreme aversion to hypocrisy, he was so 
far from assuming the appearance of virtue, that most of his 
good qualities remained hidden, Avhile he Avas most anxious 
to reveal the slightest fault into which he had fallen. He was 
a stanch friend, and a stranger to all enmity ; he behaved loy- 
ally to men when alive, and died full of confidence and trust 
in God." 



The Friendships of Lord Byron. 203 

DELAWARE (eURYALUS). 

George John, fifth Earl of Delaware, born in October, 1 791, 
succeeded to his father in July, 1 795. 

Lord Byron wrote from Harrow on the 25tli of October, 
1804:— 

" I am very comfortable here ; my friends are not numer- 
ous, but choice. Among the first of these I place Delaware, 
who is very amiable, and my great friend. He is younger 
than I am, but is gifted with the finest character. He is the 
most intelligent creature on earth, and is besides particularly 
good-looking, which is a charm in women's eyes." 

In consequence of a misunderstanding, or rather of a false 
accusation, — of which I shall speak elsewhere, in order to show 
the generosity of Lord Byron's character, — a coolness took 
place in their friendship. A charming piece in the " Hours 
of Idleness " alludes to it, and shows well the nature of his 
mind. I will only quote the seventh stanza : — 

"You knew that mj' soul, that mj' heart, my existence, 
If danger demanded, were wholly }npur own ; 
You knew me unalter'd bj-^ years or by distance. 
Devoted to love and to friendship alone." 

CLARE (lyCUS). 

John Fitzgibbon, second Earl of Clare, succeeded to his 
father in 1802 ; was twelve years Chancellor of Ireland, and, 
later, Gov'ernor of Bombay. 

Lord Byron wrote of him at Bavenna : — 

" I never hear the name of Clare without my heart beating- 
even now, and I am writing in 1821, Avith all the feelings of 
1803, 4, 5, and ad infinitmnP 

He had kept all the letters of his early friends, and among 
these is one of Lord Clare's, in which the energy of his mind 
appears even through the language of the child. At the bot- 
tom of this letter and in Byron's hand, is a note written years 
after, shoAvinsi; his tender and amiable feelin2:s : — 

" This letter was written at Harrow by Lord Clare, then, 
and I trust ev^r, my beloved friend. When we were both 
students, he sent it to me in my study, in consequence of a 



204 The Friendships of Lord Byron, 

brief childish misunderstanding, the only one we ever had. 
I keep this note only to show him, and laugh with him at the 
remembrance of the insignificance of our first and last quar- 
rel. Byeon." 

Besides mentioning Lord Clare in " Childish Recollections," 
his " Hours of Idleness " contain another poem addressed to 
him, which begins thus : — 

To ariiE Earl of Clare. ' 

" Tu semper amoris 
Sis meinor, et cari comitis ne abscedat imago." — Val. Fi.ac. 

Friend of my ji^outh ! when young we roved, 
Like striplings, mutually beloved, 
With friendship's purest glow, 
The bliss which winged those rosy houis 
Was such as pleasure seldom showers 
On mortals here below. 

The recollection seems alone 

Dearer than all the joys I've known, 

When distant far from you : 
Though pa^n, 'tis still a pleasing pain, 
To trace those daj's and hours again, 

And sigh again, adieu ! 



Our souls, my friend ! which once supplied 
One wish, nor breathed a thought beside. 

Now flow in different channels: 
Disdaining humbler rural sports, 
'Tis yours to mix in polisli'd courts, 

And shine in fashion's annals : 



I think I said 'twould be your fate 
To add one star to royal state : — 

May regal smiles attend j'ou! 
And siiould a noble monarcli reign, 
You will not seek his smiles in vain, 

If worth can recommend you. 

Yet since in danger courts abound. 
Where spec'ous rivals glitter round. 

From snares may saints preserve you ; 
And grant your love or friendship ne'er 
From any claim a kindred care, 

But those who best deserve you! 

Not for a moment may you stray 
From truth's secure, unerring way ! 



The Friendships of Lord Byron. 205 

Ma}' no delights decoj'! 
O'er roses may your footsteps move, 
Your smiles be ever smiles of love, 

Your tears be tears of joy ! 

Oh ! if you wish that happiness 

Your coming days and years may bless, 

And virtues crown your brow ; 
Be still, as you were wont to be. 
Spotless as j'ou've been known to me, — 

Be still as you are now. 

And though some trifling share of praise. 
To cheer my last declining days. 

To me were doubly dear, 
"While blessing your beloved name, 
I'd waive at once a poet''s fame, 

To prove a prophet here. 

In 1821, as he was going to Pisa, Byron met his old and 
dear friend Clare on the route to Bologna, and speaks of their 
meeting in the following terms : — 

" ' There is a strange coincidence sometimes in the little 
things of this world, Sancho,' says Sterne, in a letter (if I mis- 
take not), and so I have often found it. At page 128, article 
91, of this collection, I had alluded to my friend Lord Clare 
in terms such as my feelings suggested. About a week or 
two afterward I met him on the road between Imola and Bo- 
logna, after an interval of seven or eight years. He Avas abroad 
in 1814, and came home just as I set out in 1816. 

" This meeting annihilated for a moment all the years be- 
tween the present timc^and the days of Harrow. It was a 
new and inexplicable feeling, like rising from the grave, to 
me. Clare, too, was much agitated — more in appearance than 
I was myself ; for I could feel his heart beat to his fingers' 
ends, unless, indeed, it was the pulse of my owm which made 
me think so. He told me, that I should find a note from him 
left at Bologna. I did. We wei'e obliged to part for our 
different journeys — he for Rome, I for Pisa — but with the 
promise to meet again in the spring. We were but five min- 
utes together, and on the public road ; but I hardly recollect 
an hour of my existence wdiich" could be weighed against those 
few minutes. ... Of all I have ever known he has always 
been the least altered in every thing from the excellent quali- 
ties and kind affections which attached me to him so strongly 



206 The Friendships of Lord Byron. 

at school. I should hardly have thought it possible for so- 
ciety to leave a being with so little of the leaven of bad pas- 
sions. 

" I do not speak from personal experience only, but from 
all I have ever heard of him from others during absence and 
distance." 

" My greatest friend, Lord Clare, is at Rome," he wrote to 
Moore from Pisa, in March, 1822 : " we met on the road, and 
our meeting was quite sentimental — really pathetic on both 
sides. I have always loved him better than any male thing 
in the world." 

In June Lord Clare came to visit Byron, and on the 8th 
of that month Byron wrote to Moore : — 

" A few days ago my earliest and dearest friend. Lord 
Clare, came over from Geneva on purpose to see me before 
he returned to England. As I have always loved him, since 
I was thirteen at Harrow, better than any male thing in the 
world, I need hardly say what a melancholy pleasure it Avas 
to see him for a day only ; for he was obliged to resume his 
journey immediately." 

On another occasion he told Medwin that there is no pleas- 
ure in existence like that of meeting an early friend. 

" Lord Clare's visit," says Madame G , " gave Byron 

the greatest joy. The last day they spent together at Leg- 
horn was most melancholy. Byron had a kind of j>resenti- 
ment that he should never see his friend again, and in speak- 
ing of him, for a long time after, his ^yes always filled with 
tears." 

LO?«"G (cleon). 

Edward Long was with Lord Byron at Harrow and at 
Cambridge. He entered the Guards, and distinguished him- 
self in the expedition to Copenhagen. As he was on his way 
to join the army in the.Peninsula, in 1809, the ship in which 
he sailed was run down by another vessel, and Long was 
drowned with several others. 

Long's friendship contributed to render Byron's stay at 
Cambridge bearable after his beloved Harrow days. 

"Long," says Lord Byron, "was one of those good and 
amiable creatures who live but a short time. He had talents 
and qualities far too rare not to make him very much regret- 



The Friendships of Lord Byron. 207 

ted." He depicts him as a lively companion, with an occa- 
sional strange tovich of melancholy. One would have said he 
anticipated, as it were, the fate which awaited him. 

The letter which he wrote to Byron, on leaving the Uni- 
versity to enter the Guards, was so full of sadness that it con- 
trasted strangely with his habitual humor. 

" His manners," says Lord Byron, " Avere amiable and gen- 
tle, and he had a great disposition to look at the comical side 
of things. He was a musician, and played on several instru- 
ments, especially the flute and the violincello. We spent our 
evenings with music, but I was only a listener. Oui-principal 
beverage consisted in soda-water. During the day we rode, 
swam, walked, and read together; but we only spent one 
summer with each other." 

On his leaving Cambridge, Byron addressed to him the 
following lines : — 

To Edward Nokl, Long, Esq. 
" Nil ego contulerim jocundo sanus nniico." — Hokace. 

Dear Long, in this sequester'd scene, 

While all around in slumber lie/ 
The jo3'ous daj-s which ours have been 

Come rolling fresh on Fancy's eye ; 
Thus if amid the gathering storm, 
While clouds the darken'd noon deform. 
Yon heaven assumes a varied glow, 
I hail the sky's celestial bow. 
Which spreads the sign of future peace, 
^ And bids the war of tempests cease. 

Ah ! though the present brings but pain, 
I think those days maj' come again ; 
Or if, in melancholy mood. 
Some lurking envious fear intrude. 
To check my bosom's fondest thought. 

And interrupt the golden dream, 
I crush the iiend witli malice fraught, 

And still indulge my wonted theme. 
Although we ne'er again can trace 
. In Granta's vale the pedant's lore ; 
Nor through the groves of Ida chase 

Our raptured visions as before, 
Though Youth has flown on rosy pinion, 
And Manhood claims his stern dominion, 
Age will not every hope destroy, 
But yield some hours of sober joy. 

Yes, I will hope that Time's broad wing 
Will shed around some dews of spring: 



208 The Friendships of Lord Byron. 

But if his scythe must sweep the flowers 
Whicla bloom among the fairy bowers, 
Where smiling youtli delights to tUvtU, 
And hearts with early rapture swell ; 
If frowning age, witli cold control, 
Confines the current of the soul. 
Congeals the tear of Pity's ej^e, 
Or checks the sj'mpathetic sigh, 
Or hears unmoved misfortune's groan, 
And bids me feel for self alone ; 
Oh, may my bosom never learn 

To soothe its wonted heedless flow, 
Still, still despise the censor stern, 

But ne'er forget another's woe. 
Yes, as you knew me in the daj's 
O'er which Remembrance j'et delays, 
Still may I rove, untutor'd, wild, 
And even in age at heart a child. 

Though now on air}' visions borne. 

To you my soul is still the same. 
Oft has it been my fate to mourn, 

And all my former joys are tame. 
But hence! ye hours of sable hue! 

Your frowns are gone, my sori'ows o'er : 
By every bliss ni}' childhood knew, 

I'll think upon your shade no more. 
Thus, Avhen the whirlwind's rage is ])ast, 

And caves their sullen roar inclose, 
We heed no more the wintrj' blast. 

When luU'd by zephyr to repose. 

Long's death was the cause of great grief to Lord By- 
ron. 

" Long's father," said he, " has written to ask me to write 
his son's epitaph. I promised to do it, but I never had tlie 
strength to finish it." 

I will add that Mr. Wathen having gone to visit Lord By- 
ron at Ravenna, and having told him that he knew Long, By- 
ron henceforth treated him with the xitmost cordiality. He 
spoke of Long and of his amiable qualities, until he could no 
longer hide his tears. 

Li the month of October, 1805, Lord Byron left Harrow for 
Trinity College, Cambridge, and in 1821 he thus described him- 
self, and his own feelings on leaving his beloved Ida for a new 
scene of life : — 

" When I went to college it was for me a most paiirful 
event. I left Harrow against my wish, and so took it to 
heart, that before I left I never slept for counting the days 



The Friendships of Lord Byron. 209 

which I had still to spend there. In the second place, I Avish- 
ed to go to Oxford and not to Cambridge ; and, in the third 
place, I found myself so isolated in this new world, that my 
mind was perfectly depressed by it. 

"Not that my companions were not sociable: quite the 
contrary ; they were particularly lively, hospitable, rich, noble, 
and much more gay than myself. I mixed, dined, and sup- 
ped with them ; but, I don't know why, the most painful and 
galling sensation of life was that of feeling I was no longer a 
child." 

His grief was such that he fell ill, and it was during that 
ilhiess that he wrote and j^artly dictated the poem " Recollec- 
tions of Childhood," in which he mentions and describes all 
his dear comrades of Harrow, with that particular charm- of 
expression and thought which the heart alone can inspire. 

It was again under the same impression that he wrote the 
most melancholy lines in the "Hours of Idleness," where the 
regret of the joast delightful days of his childhood, spent at 
his dear Ida, ever comes prominently forward. 

"I would I were a careless child," 

he exclaims in one poem, and finishes the same by the lines, — 

" Oh that to me the wings were given 
Which bear the turtle to her nest ! 
Then would I cleave the vault of Heaven 
To flee away, and be at rest." 

Life at Harrow appears to have been for him then the 
ideal of happiness. At times the distant view of the village 
and college of Harrow, inspires his muse, at others a visit to 
the college itself, and an hour spent under the shade of an 
elm in the church-yard. His whole soul is- So revealed in 
these two poems, that I can not forbear quoting them in 
extenso : — 

0.\ A DISTANT View of the Village and School of 
Haruow-on-the-hill. 

" oil ! mihi prreteritos referat si Jupiter annos." — Viugii,. 

Ye scenes of my childhood, whose loved recollection 
Embitters the ])resent, compared with the past ; 

Where science first dawn'd on the powers of reflection. 
And friendships were form'd, too romantic to last ; 



210 The Feiendships of Lord Byron. 

Where fancy j'et joys to trace the resemblance 
Of comrades, iu friendship and mischief allied, 

How welcome to me your ne'er-fading remembrance, 
Which rests in the bosom, though hope is denied! 

Again I revisit the hills where we sported, 

The streams where we swam, and the fields •where we fought; 
The school where, loud warn'd by the bell, we resorted. 

To pore o'er the precepts by pedagogues taught. 

Again I behold where for hours I have ponder'd. 
As reclining, at eve, on yon tombstone I lay ; 

Or I'ound the steep brow of the church-j-ard I wander'd, 
To catch the last gleam of the. sun's setting ray. 

I once more view ths room, with spectators surrounded, 

Where, as Zanga, I trod on Alouzo o'erlhrown ; 
While, to swell mj' young pride, such applauses refounded, 
I fancied that Mossop himself was outshown.* 

Or, as Lear, I pour'd forth the deep imprecation. 

By my daughters of kingdom and reason deprived; 

Till, fired by loud plaudits and self-adulation, 
I regarded myself as a Gan-ick revived. 

Ye dreams of my boyhood, how much I regret you! 

Unfaded your memory dwells in my breast; 
Though sad and deserted, I ne'er can forget j'ou. 

Your pleasures may still be in fancy possest. 

To Ida full oft may remembrance restore me. 

While fate shall the shades of the future unroll ! 

Since darkness o'ershadows the prospect before mo, 
More dear is the beam of the past to my soul ! 

But if, through the course of the years which await me, 
Some new scene of pleasure should open to view, 

1 will say, while with rapture tiie thought shall elate me, 
"Oh! such were the days which my infancy knew!" 



LiSr.S WRITTEN BENEATH AN ElM IN TIIE ClIUUCH-YARD OF HARROW. 

Spot of my youth ! whose hoaiy branches sigh, 
Swept bj' the breeze that fans thy cloudless sky ; 
Where now alone I muse, who oft have trod, 
Witli those I loved, tin' soft and verdant sod ; 
^ With those who, scatter'd far, perchance deplore, 
Ivike me, the happy scenes they knew before : 
Oh ! as I trace again thy winding hill. 
Mine ej'es admire, my heart adores thee still. 



* Mossop, a contemporary of Garrick, famous for his performance of Zanga. 



The Friendships of Lokd Byron. 2il 

Thou drooping Elm! beneath whose boughs I lay, 
And frequent mused the twilight hours away ; 
Where, as they once were wont, m_y limbs recline, 
But ail! without the thoughts which then were mine: 
How do thy branches, moaning to the blast, 
Invite the bosom to recall the past. 
And seem to whisper, as they gently swell, 
"Take, while thou canst, a lingering, last farewell!" 

When fate shall chill, at length, this fever'd breast, 
And calm its cares and passions into rest. 
Oft have I thought, 'twould soothe m}' dying hour — 
If aught may soothe when life resigns her power — 
To know some humble grave, some narrow cell. 
Would hide my bosom where it loved to dwell. 
With this fond dream, methinks, 'twere sweet to die — 
And here it lingerVl, here my heart might lie ; 
Here might I sleep where all my hopes arose ; 
Scene of mj' youth, and couch of my repose ; 
Forever stretch'd beneath this mantling shade, 
Press'd by the turf where once my childhood play'd ; 
Wrapt by the soil that veils the spot I loved, 
!Mix'd with the earth o'er which my footsteps moved ; 
Blsst bj' the tongues tiiat charm'd my youthful ear, 
Mourn'd by the few my soul acknowledged here ; 
Deplored by those in earlj' days allied, 
And imremember'd by the world beside. 

" But althouglt he may for a time," says Moore, " have ex- 
perienced this kind of moral atomy, it was not in his nature 
to be long without attaching himself to somebody, and the 
friendship which he conceived for Eddleston — a man younger 
than himself, and not at all of his rank in society — even sur- 
passed in ardor all the other attachments of his youth." 



EDDLESTOX 

was one of the choristers at Cambridge. His talent for music 
attracted Byron's attention. When he lost the society of 
Long, who had been liis sole comfort at Cambridge, he took 
very much to the company of young Eddleston. One feels 
how much he was attached to him, on reading those lines in 
which he thanks Eddleston for a cornelian heart he had sent 
him : — 

The Cornelian. 

No specious splendor of this stone 

Endears it to my memory ever ; 
With lustre only once it shone. 

And blushes modest as the giver. 



2i2 The Fkiendships of Lokd Byron. 

Some, who can sneer at friendship's ties, 
Have for niv wealiness oft reproved me ; 

Yet still the simple gift I prize, 

For I am sure the giver loved me. 

He offer'd it with downcast look, 

As fearful that I might refuse it; 
I told him, when the gift I took. 

My only fear should be to lose it. 

When Ecldleston left college, Lord Byron wrote to Miss 
Pigott a letter full of regret at having lost his youthful friend, 
and thanking her for having taken an interest in him. 

" During the whole time we were at Cambridge togeth- 
er," says Byron, " Ave saw each other every day, summer and 
winter, and never once found a moment of ennui, but part- 
ed each day with -greater regret. I trust," he added, at the 
end of his letter, " that you will some day see lis together ; 
that is the being I esteem most, though I love several oth- 
ers." 

But in the year 1811 Eddleston died of consumption; and 
Lord Byron wrote to Miss Pigott's mother, to beg of her to 
retui-n the cornelian heart which he had intrusted to her care, 
because it had " now acquired a value which he wished it had 
never had ;" the original donor having died at the age of 
twenty-one, a few months before, and being " the sixth in the 
space of four months of a series of friends and relations whom 
he had lost since May." 

The cornelian heart Avas restored, and Byron Avas informed 
that he had only intrusted it, but not given it to Miss Pigott. 
It was on learning of Eddleston's death that Byron added 
the touching ninth stanza to the second canto of " Childe 
Harold." 

After speaking of the hoj^e of meeting again in a celestial 
abode, those Avhom he loved on earth, and all those Avho 
taught the truth, he exclaims, — 

"There, thou! — whose love and life together fled. 
Have left me here to love and live in vain — 
Twined with my heart, and can I deem thee dead 
A\'hen busy Jlemory flashes on mj' brain ? 
AA'ell — I will dream that we may meet again. 
And woo the vision to my vacant breast : 
If aught of young Remembrance then remain, 
Be as it may Futuritj''s beliest. 
For me 'twere bliss enough to know th}' spirit blest!" 



The Fkiendships of Lord Byron. 213 

Among the children younger than himself of whom he 
established himself the protector, one of those he loved best 
Avas his fag William Harness. 

HARNESS. 

The Rev. William Harness is the author of the work en- 
titled the " Relations between Christianity and Happiness, by 
one of the oldest and most esteemed friends of Lord Byron." 

Harness was four years younger than Byron, and one of 
the earliest friends he made at Harrow. Lord Byron had not 
been long at the school, and had not yet formed any friend- 
ship with other boys, when he saw a boy, " still lame from an 
accident of his childhood, and but just recovered from a se- 
vere illness, bullied by a boy much older and stronger than 
Jiimself." Byron interfered and took his part. 

" We both seem perfectly to recollect," says he, " with a 
mixture of pleasure and regret, the hours we once j^assed to- 
gether ; and I assure you, most sincerely, they are numbered 
among the happiest of my brief chronicle of enjoyment. I am 
now getting into years, that is to say, I was twenty a month 
ago, and another year Avill send me into the world, to run my 
career of folly with the rest. I was then just fourteen — you 
were almost the first of my Harrow friends, certainly the first 
in my esteem, if not in date ; but an absence from Harrow for 
some time shortly after, and new connections on your side, 
and the difference in our conduct, from that turbulent and 
riotous disposition of mine which impelled me into every 
species of mischief, all these circumstances combined to de- 
stroy our intimacy, which affection urged me to continue, and 
Memory compels me to regret. But there is not a circum- 
stance attending that period, hardly a sentence we exchanged, 
which is not impressed on my mind at this moment. 

" There is another circumstance you do not know : — the 
first lines I ever attempted at Harrow were addressed to you ; 
but as on our return from the holidays Ave Avere strangers, 
the lines Aver6 destroyed. 

" I have dwelt longer on this theme than I intended, and 
I shall noAV conclude Avith Avhat I ousxht to haA^e begun. 
Will you sometimes Avrite to me ? I do not ask it often, and, 
if Ave meet, let us be Avhat Ave should be, and Avhat Ave Averc." 



214 The Friendships of Lord Byron. 

Young Harness, gifted with a calm and mild temperament, 
was being ediicated for the Church. Besides being always 
at Harrow, and four years younger than Byron, the life which 
the latter led at Newstead and at Cambridge did not sviit one 
destined to a career which requires greater severity of de- 
meanor. But the two friends corresponded, and Lord Byron 
sent him one of his early copies of " Hours of Idleness." In 
the letter which the Rev. W. Harness wrote to Moore, after 
Byron's death, to tell him the nature of the quarrel which he 
and Byron had had together, and their subsequent reconcilia- 
tion, he ends by saying : — 

" Our conversation was renewed and continued from that 
time till his going abroad. Whatever faults Lord Byron 
may have exhibited toward others^ to myself he was always 
uniformly affectionate. ... I can not call to mind a single in- 
stance of caprice or unkindness in the whole course of our in- 
timacy to allege against him." 

The fault to which Harness alludes, and which he acknowl- 
edges, was one of the kind to which Byron was most sensi- 
tive, namely, coldness. Having lost some of his early and 
best friends, Edward Long, and all the others being spread 
far and near, abroad and in England, following out their re- 
spective careers and destiny. Harness Avas about the only ear- 
ly friend he had near him. 

The time was approaching Avhen he Avas going to leave 
England, to travel and to learn by study the great book of 
ISTature. His heart was wounded by the injustice Avhich had 
been done him, by the many disenchantments Avhich he had 
expei'ienced, by the brutal criticism of his " Hours of Idle- 
ness " from the pen of his relation Lord Carlisle, and by his 
money difficulties. Unable as yet to foretell the effects of his 
satire, which had not yet appeared, and the success of which 
might have consoled him a little for past mortifications, he 
found in friendship his sole n-elief, and particularly in the 
friendship of Harness. At this very critical time. Harness — 
(be it either through the influence of his family and relations, 
or through a notion that his principles Avere rather unsuited 
to the heterodox opinions of Lord Byron) — behaved coldly 
tOAvard Byron. Dallas, hoAVCA'cr, Avho from puritanism and 
family pride, and even from jealousy, Avas rather an enemy of 



The Friendships of Lord Byron. 215 

Lord Byron's intellectual friends — (contending that it Avas 
they who had instilled into Byron all the anti-orthodox views 
which the poet had adopted) — makes an exception in favor 
of Harness. 

Byron spoke of Harness with an affection which he hoped 
was repaid to him. I often met him at Newstead, and both 
he and Byron had had their portraits taken, which they were 
to make a present of to one another. It was not until some 
unknown cause sprung up to establish a coldness between tlie 
two friends that their intimacy ceased, and at the same time 
Harness's visits to Newstead. Byron felt it very keenly. 

In what degree the conduct of Harness hurt Lord Byron 
and contributed to those explosions of misanthropy which, 
slight and passing as they were ; have nevertheless been urged 
as a reproach against his first fjftd second cantos of " Childe 
Harold," I shall examine later. 

Here it is only necessary to say that in a soul such as his, 
where rancor could never live, such a coldness Avounded him 
without altering his sentiments in any way. After two years' 
absence he retui-ned to England, and so heartily forgave Har- 
ness that he actually wished to dedicate to him the first two 
cantos of " Childe Harold," and only gave up this idea from 
a generous fear that its dedication might injure him in his 
clerical profession, on account of certain stanzas in the poem 
which were not quite orthodox. 

" The letter," says Moore, " in which he expresses .these 
delicate sentiments is, unfortunately, lost." 

Some months after his retui-n to' England he resumed liis 
correspondence with Harness, and both the friends assembled 
at Newstead. Harness, however, as a clergyman, was severe 
in his ji^dgments. Byron Avrote to him : — 

" You are censorious, child : when you are a little older, 

you Avill learn to dislike every body, but abuse nobody 

I thank you most truly for the concluding part of your letter. 
I have been of late not much accustomed to kindness from 
any quarter, and I am not the less pleased to meet Avith it 
again fi-om one to Avtiom I had knoAvn it earliest. I have not 
changed in all my ramblings ; Harrow, and of course yourself, 
never left me, and the 

' Dulces reminiscitur Argon.' 



216 The Friendships of Lord Byron. 

attended me to the very spot to -which that sentence alludes 
in the mind of the fallen Argive. Our intimacy began before 
we began to date at all, and it rests with you to continue it 
till the hour Avhicli nmst number it and me Avith the things 
that were." 

Two days afterward, he writes to him again a letter full of 
endearing expressions, couched in a friendly tone of interest, 
of which the following extracts are instances : — 

" And now, child, what art thou doing? Reading, I trust. 
I want to see you take a degree. Remember, this is the most 
important j^eriod of your life ; and don't disappoint your j^apa 
and your aunt and all your kin, besides myself. 

" You see, mio carissimo, what a pestilent correspondent I 
am likely to become ; but then you shall be as quiet at Newstead 
as you please, and I won't dfeturb your studies as I do now." 

On the 11th of December, of the same year, he invites 

Moore to Newstead and says, " H will be here, and a 

young friend named Harness, the earliest and dearest I ever 
had from the third form at Harrow to this hour." 

And, finally, he wrote to Harness that he had no greater 
pleasure than to hear from him ; indeed, that it was more than 
a pleasure. 

HIS LATER FEIENDS. 

"When he had reached his nineteenth year, which was the 
second of his stay at Cambridge, Byron (having lost sight of 
most of his Harrow friends to Avhoni he dedicated his verses, 
and having lost both Long and Eddleston) suddenly found 
himself launched into the vortex of a university life, for which 
he had no liking. Happily, however, he was thrown among 
young men of great distinction, whom fate had then gathered 
at Cambridge. 

" It was so brilliant a constellation," says Moore, " that per- 
haps such a one will never be seen again." Among these he 
selected his friends from their literary merit. Those he most 
distinguished Avere Hobhouse, Matthews, Banks, and Scroopc 
Davies. They formed a coterie at Cambridge, and spent most 
of their holidays at Newstead. 

HOBHOUSE. 

Sir John Cam Hobhouse, Bart,, since created a peer, imder 



The Friendships of Lord Byrox. 217 

the name of Lord Broughton, is one of the statesmen and 
Avriters the memory of whom England most reveres. It is he 
whom Byron addresses as Moschns in the " Hints from Hor- 
ace." After being Byrons fi-iend at college, he became his 
faithful companion likewise inhis travels, and throughout his 
short-lived but brilliant career. It was he who accompanied 
Byron in the fatal journey to Seaham, Avhere Byron wedded 
Miss Milbank. It was he who stood best man on that occa- 
sion, and it was he whom Byron selected as his executor. 

As soon as Byron became of age in 1809, the" two friends 
left England together to visit Greece, Portugal, Spain, and 
Turkey. The results of these travels were, Byron's first two 
cantos of "Childe Harold," and Ilobhouse's "Journey across 
Albania, and other Provinces of Turkey in Europe and in 
Asia." 

On their return to England, their intimacy did not cease. 
" Hobhouse," Byron was wont to say, " ever gets me out of 
difficulty ;" and in his journal of 1814 he says, " Hobhouse has 
returned. He is my best friend, the most animated and most 
amusing, and one whose knowledge is very deep and extensive. 
Hobhouse told me ten thousand anecdotes of Napoleon, which 
must be true. Hobhouse is the most interesting of travelling 
companions, and really excellent." 

Lord Byron wished him to be his best man w^hen he mar- 
ried Miss^Milbank at Seaham, and after his separation from 
her Hobhouse joined him in Switzerland. They travelled 
together through the Oberland, and visited all the scenes 
which inspired that magnificent poem entitled "Manfred." 
Thence they left for Italy, and visited it from North to South ; 
from the Alps to Rome. The result of this journey was the 
fourth canto of " Childe Harold " from Byron, and from Hob- 
house a volume of notes, which constitutes a work of very 
great merit. If such a companion was agreeable to B^Ton, 
Byron was not less so to Hobhouse, who deplores a journey 
he had made without the company of that friend, whose per- 
spicacity of observation and ingenious remarks united in pro- 
ducing that liveliness and good-humor, which take away half 
the sting of fatigue, and soften the aspect of danger and of 
difficulties. 

During his absence from England Byron always insisted 

K 



218 The Friendships of Lord Byron. 

that all matters relating to the settlement of his affairs should 
pass through the hands of Hobhouse, his "alter ego" when 
near or when absent. His highest testimony of regard and 
friendship for Hobhouse, however, is to be found in the dedi- 
cation of the fourth canto of " Childe Harold," which was 
written in Italy in 1815, and which is as follows : — 

Canto the Fourth. 

To John Hobhouse, Esq., A.3f., F.R.S., etc. 

Venice, January 2, 181S. 

My dear Hobhouse, — After an interval of eight years between the composi- 
tion of the first and last cantos of Childe Harold, the conclusion of the poem is 
about to be submitted to the public. In parting with so old a friend, it is not 
extraordinary that I should recur to one still older and better, — to one who has 
beheld the birth and death of the other, and to whom I am far more indebted for 
the social advantages of an enlightened friendship, than — though not ungrateful 
— I can, or could be, to Childe Harold, for any public favor reflected through the 
poem on the poet, — to one whom I have known long and accompanied far, whom 
I have found wakeful over my sickness and kind in my sorrow, glad in my pros- 
perity and tirm in my adversity, true in counsel and trustj' in peril, — to a friend 
often tried and never found wanting ; — to yourself. 

In so doing, I recur from fiction to truth ; and in dedicating to you, in its com- 
plete or at least concluded state, a poetical work which is the longest, the most 
thoughtful and comprehensive of my compositions, I wish to do honor to myself 
bv the record of many years' intimacy with a man of learning, of talent, of steadi- 
ness, and of honor. It is not for minds like ours to give or to receive flattery ; 
vet the praises of sincerity have ever been permitted to the voice of friendship ; 
and it is not for you, nor even for others, but to relieve a heart which has not 
elsewhere, or lately, been so much accustomed to the encounter of good-will as to 
withstand the shock firmly, that I thus attempt to commemorate your good quali- 
ties, or rather the advantages which I have derived from their exertion. Even 
the recurrence of the date of this letter, the anniversary of the most unfortunate 
day of my past existence,* but which can not poison my future while I retain 
the resource of your friendship, and of my own faculties, will henceforth have a 
more agi-eeable recollection for both, inasmuch as it will remind us of this my 
attempt to thank you for an indefatigable regard, such as few men have experi- 
enced, and no one could experience without thinking better of his species and of 
himself. 

It has been our fortune to traverse together, at various periods, the countries 
of chivalry, histor}-, and fable — Spain, Greece, Asia Minor, and Italy ; and what 
Athens and Constantinople were to us a few years ago, Venice and Rome have 
been more recently. The poem also, or the pilgrim, or both, have accompanied 
me from first to last; and perhaps it may be a pardonable vanity which induces 
me to reflect with complacency on a composition which in some degree connects 
me with the spot where it was produced, and the objects it would fain describe ; 
and however unworthy it may be deemed of those magical and memorable abodes, 
however short it may fall of our distant conceptions and immediate impressions, 
yet as a mark of respect for what is venerable, and of feeling for what is glorious, 
it has been to me a source of pleasure in the production, and I part with it with a 
kind of regret, which I hardly suspected that events could have left me for im- 
aginary objects. 

* His marriage. 



The Friendships of Lord Byron. 219 

With regard to the conduct of the last canto, there will be found less of the 
pilgrim than in anjj of the preceding, and that little slightly, if at all, separated 
from the author speaking in his own person. The fact is, that I had become wearr 
of drawing a line which everj' one seemed determined not to perceive : like the 
Chinese in Goldsmith's " Citizen of the World," whom nobody would believe to 
be a Chinese, it was in vain that I asserted, and imagined that I had drawn, a 
distinction between the author and the pilgriih ; and the very anxiety to preserve 
this difference, and disappointment at finding it unavailing, so far crushed my 
efforts in the composition, that I determined to abandon it altogether — and have 
done so. The opinions which have been, or may be, formed on that subject, are 
now a matter of indifference : the work is to depend on itself and not on the writer ; 
and the author, who has no resources in his own mind beyond the reputation, 
transient or permanent, which is to arise from his literary efforts, deserves the 
fate of authors. 

In the course of the following canto it was my intention, either in the text or 
in the notes, to have touched upon the present state of Italian literature, and per- 
haps of manners. But the text, within the limits I proposed, I soon found hardly 
sufficient for the labyrinth of external objects, and the consequent reflections ; 
and for the whole of the notes, excepting a few of the shortest, I am indebted to 
yourself, and these were necessarily limited to the elucidation of the text. 

It is also a delicate, and no v&ry grateful task, to dissert upon the literature 
and manners of a nation so dissimilar ; and requires an attention and impartiality 
which would induce us — though perhaps no inattentive observers, nor ignorant of 
the language or customs of the people among whom we have recently abode — to 
distrust, or at least defer our judgment, and more narrowly examine our informa- 
tion. The state of literarj' as well as political party appears to run, or to have 
run, so high, that for a stranger to steer impartially between them is next to im- 
possible. It may be enough then, at least for my purpose, to quote from their 
own beautiful language — " Mi pare che in un paese tutto poetico, che vanta la 
lingua la piu nobile ed insieme la piii dolce, tutte tutte le vie diverse si possono 
tentare, e che sinche la patria di Alfieri e di Monti non ha perduto I'antico va- 
lore, in tutte essa dovrebbe essere la prima." Italy has great names still : Ca- 
nova, Monti, Ugo Foscolo, Pindemonte, Yisconti, Mcrelli, Cicognara, Albrizzi, 
Mezzophanti, Mai, Mustoxidi, Aglietti, and Vacca, wiU secure to the present gen- 
eration an honorable place in most of the departments of art, sciences, and belles- 
lettres ; and in some the very highest. Europe— the World— has but one Canova. 

It has been somewhere said by Alfieri, that " La pianta uomo nasce.piu robns- 
ta in Italia che in qualunque altra terra — e che gli stessi atroci delitti che vi si 
commettono ne sono una prova." Without subscribing to the latter part of his 
proposition — a dangerous doctrine, the truth of which may be disputed on better 
grounds, namely, that the Italians are in no respect more ferocious than their 
neighbors — that man must be willfully blind, or ignorantly heedless, who is not 
sti-uck with the extraordinary' capacity of this people, or, if such a word be ad- 
missible, their capabilities, the facility of their acquisitions, the rapidity of their 
conceptions, the fire of their genius, their sense of beauty, and amid all the dis- 
advantages of repeated revolutions, the desolation of battles, and the despair ^of 
ages, their still unquenched " longing after immortality'" — the immortality of 
independence. And when we ourselves, in riding round the walls of Rome, 
heard the simple lament of the laborers' chorus, " Roma ! Roma ! Roma ! Roma 
non k piu come era prima," it was difficult not to contrast this melancholy dirge 
with the bacchanal roar of the songs of exultation still yelled from the London 
taverns, over the carnage of Mont St. Jean, and the betrayal of Genoa, of Italy, 
of France, and of the world, by men whose conduct you yourself have exposed 
in a work worthy of the better days of our history. For me, — 

"Xon movero mai corda 
Ove la turba di sue ciance assorda." 



220 The Friendships of Lord Byron. 

What Italy has gained by the late transfer of nations, it were useless for En- 
glishmen to inquire, till- it becomes ascertained that England has acquired some- 
thing more than a permanent arm}- and a suspended Habeas Corpus ; it is enough 
for them to look at home. For what they have done abroad, and especially in 
the south, " verily thej'^ vill have their reward," and at no very distant period. 

Wishing j'ou, my dear Hobhouse, a safe and agreeable return to that country 
whose real welfare can be dearer to none than to yourself, I dedicate to you this 
poem in its completed state ; and repeat once more how truly I am ever, your 
obliged and affectionate friend, Bykon. 



MATTHEWS. 

" Of this remarkable young man, Charles Skinner Mat- 
thews," says Moore, " I have already had occasion to speak ; 
but the high station which he held in Lord Byron's affection 
and admiration may justify a somewhat ampler tribute to his 
memory. 

" There have seldom, perhaps, started together in life so 
many youths of high promise and hope as were to be found 
among the society of which Lord Byron formed a part at 
Cambridge. Among all these young men of learning and 
talent, the superiority in almost every department of intellect 
seems to have been, by the ready consent of all, awarded to 

Matthews Young Matthews appears — in spite of some 

little asperities of temper and manner, which he was already 
beginning to soften down when snatched away — to have been 
one of those rare individuals who, while they command defer- 
ence, can at the same time win regard, and who, as it were, 
relieve the intense feeling of admiration which they excite by 
blending it with love." 

Matthews died while bathing in the Cam. 

On the 7th of September, 1811, Byron wrote to Dallas as fol- 
lows : — " Matthews, Hobhouse, Davies, and myself, formed a 
coterie of our own at Cambridge and elsewhere. . . . Davies, 
who is not a scribbler, has always beaten us all in the war of 

\^ords. H and myself always had the worst of it with 

the other two, and even M vielded to the dashing vivac- 
ity of S. D ." • 

And in another letter: — "You did not know M : he 

was a man of the most. astonishing powers." 

And again, speaking of his death to Mr. Hodgson, he 
writes : — 

" You will feel for poor Hobhouse ; Matthews was the god 



The Friendships of Lord Byron. 221 

of his idolatry; and if intellect could exalt a man above his 
fellows, no one would refuse him pre-eminence." 

Matthews died at the time when he was offering himself 
to compete for a lucrative and honorable position in the Uni- 
versity. As soon as his death was known, it was said that if 
the highest talents could be sure of success, if the strictest 
principles of honor, and the devotion to him of a multitude 
of friends could have assured it, his dream would have been 
realized. 

Besides a great superiority of intellect, Matthews was gift- 
ed with a very amusing originality of thought, which, joined 
to a very keen sense of the ridiculous, exercised a kind of ir- 
resistible fascination. Lord Byron, who loved a joke better 
than any one, took great pleasure in all the amusing eccen- 
tricities of him who was styled the Dean of Newstead, while 
Byron had been christened by him the Abbot of that place. 

Shortly before his death, in 1821, Byron wrote a very 
amusing letter from Ravenna to Murray, recalling a host of 
anecdotes relating to Matthews, and which well set forth the 
clever eccentricity of the man for whom Byron professed so 
much esteem and admiration. 

SCEOOPE DAVIES. 

We have already seen what Byron thought of Davies. His 
cleverness, his great vivacity, and his gayety, were great re- 
sources to Byron in his moments of affliction. When, in 
1811, Byron experienced the bitterest loss of his life — that of 
his mother — he wrote from Newstead to beg that Davies 
would come and console him. 

Shortly after, he wrote to Hodgson to say, " Davies has 
been here. His gayety, which death itself can not change, 
has been of great service to me : but it must be allowed that 
our laughter was very false." 

We must not forget to mention, among the friends of By- 
ron, William Banks, Mr. Pigott, of Southwell, and Mr. Hodg- 
son, a writer of great merit, who was one of his companions 
at Newstead, and with whom he corresponded even during 
his voyage in the East. For all these he maintained through- 
out life the kindest remembrance, as also for Mr. Beecher, for 
whom he entertained a regard equal to his affection. Mr. 



222 The Friendships of Lord Byron. 

Beecher having disapproved of the moral tendency of his 
early poems, Lord Byron destroyed in one night the whole of 
the first edition of those poems, in order to prove his sense 
of esteem for Mr. Beecher's opinion. In the same category 
we should place Lord Byron's fi-iendship for Dr. Drury, his 
tutor at Harrow ; but this latter friendship is so marked with 
feelings of I'espect, veneration, and gratitude, that I had rather 
speak of it later, when I shall treat of the last-named quality, 
as one of the most noticeable in Lord Byron's character. 

GEIEF WHICH HE EXPERIENCED AT THE LOSS OF HIS 
FRIENDS. 

The grief which the loss of his friends occasioned to him 
was i^roportioned to the degree of affection which he enter- 
tained for them. By a curious fatality he had the misfortune 
to lose at an early age, almost all those he loved. This grief 
reached its climax on his return from his first travels. 

" If," says Moore, " to be able to depict powerfully the 
painful emotions it is necessary first to have experienced 
them, or, in other words, if, for the poet to be great, the man 
must suffer, Lord Byron, it must be owned, paid early this 
dear price of mastery. In the short space of one month," he 
says in a note on Childe Harold, " I have lost her who gave 
me being, and most of those who made that being tolerable." 
Of these young Wingfield, whom we have seen high on the list 
of his Harrow favorites, died of a fever at Coimbra ; and Mat- 
thews, the idol of his admiration at Cambridge, was drowned 
while bathing in the Cam, The following letter, written short- 
ly after, shows so powerful a feeling of regret, and displays 
such real grief, that it is almost painful to peruse it : 

" My dearest Davies, — Some curse hangs over me and 
mine. My mother lies a coi'pse in this house ; one of my best 
fi'iends is drowned in a ditch. What can I say, or think, or 
do ? My dear Scroope, if you can spare a moment, do come 
down to me; I want a friend. Matthews's last letter was 
written on Friday ; on Saturday he was not. In ability who 
was like Matthews? Come to me; I am almost desolate; 

left almost alone in the world. I had but you and H 

and M , and let me enjoy the survivors while I can." 

Writing to Dallas on the first of August, he says : — 



The Friendships of Lord Byron. 223 

" Besides her who gave me being, I have lost more than 
one who made that being tolerable. Matthews, a man of the 
first talents, has perished miserably in the muddy waves of 
the Cam ; my poor school-fellow Wingfield, at Coimbra, with- 
in a month : and while I had heard from all three, but not 
seen one. But let this pass ; we shall all one day pass along 
with the rest ; the world is too full of such things, and our 
very sorrow is selfish." 

To Hodgson he writes : — 

" Indeed, the blows followed each other so rapidly, that I 
am yet stupid from the shock ; and though I do eat, and drink, 
and talk, and even laugh at times, yet I can hardly persuade 
myself that I am awake, did not every morning convince me 
mournfully to the contrary. 

" You will write to me ? I am solitary, and I never felt 
solitude irksome before." 

Some months later he heard of the death of his friend Ed- 
dleston, of which he wrote to Dallas in the following terms : 

" I have been again shocked with a death, and have lost 
one very dear to me in happier times. But 'I have almost 
forgot the taste of grief,' and ' supped full of horrors ' till I 
have become callous, nor have I a tear left for an event which, 
five years ago, would have bowed down my head to the earth. 
It seems as though I were to experience in my youth the 
greatest misery of age. My friends fall around me, and I 
shall be left a lonely tree before I am withered." 

On that same day, 11th of October, when his mind was a 
prey to such grief, he received a letter from Hodgson, advis- 
ing him to banish all cares and to find in pleasure the distrac- 
tion he needed. Lord Byron replied by some lines which 
Moore has reproduced ; but the last of which he omitted to 
give, and which were written only to mystify the excellent 
Mr. Hodgson, who always looked at every thing and every 
one in a bright light, and whom Byron wished to frighten. 

Here are the first lines : — 

"Oh! banish care, such ever be 
The motto of thy revelry ! 
Perchance of mine when •wassail nights 
Renew those riotous delights, 
'Wherewith the children of Despair 
Lull the lone heart, and ' banish care,' 
But not in morn's reflecting hour." 



224 The Friendships of Lord Byron. 

Two days after replying in verse, he answered him in prose. 

" I am growing nervous — it is really true — really, wretch- 
edly, ridiculously, fine-ladically, nervous. I can neither read, 
write, nor amuse myself, or any one else. My days are list- 
less, and my nights restless." 

Tlie same day, 11th October, 1811, one of the darkest in 
his life, he wrote also his first stanza, addressed to Thyrza, of 
which the pathetic charm seems to rise to the highest pitch. 

" To no other but an imaginary being," says Moore, " could 
he have addressed such tender and melancholy poetical lines." 

byron's friendship for mooee. 

At this time of his life, whether from the numerous in- 
juries inflicted on him by men and by fate, or fi-om some other 
circumstance, Byron seemed to be less given to friendships 
than formerly. He felt the force of friendship as deeply as 
before, but he became less expansive. Death, in taking so 
many of his friends away from him, had endeared those who 
remained still more to his heart, and caused him to seek among 
these the consolation he wanted. It is not true to say that 
Lord Byron was left alone entirely, at any time of his life : 
quite the contrary, he at all times lived in the midst of friends 
more or less devoted to him. DaUas and Moore pretend that 
there was a time in his early youth when he had no friends at 
all ; but this time can not be stated, unless one forgets the 
names of Hobhouse, Hodgson, Harness, Clare, and many others 
who never lost sight of him, and unless one forgets the life of 
devotion which he led at Southwell and at Newstead both be- 
fore and after his travels in the East. 

Dallas and Moore, in speaking of this momentary isolation, 
in all probability adopted a common prejudice which causes 
them to believe that a lord must ever be lonely xmless he is 
surrounded by a circle of rich and fashionable companions. 
The truth is that Byron, having left England immediately on 
quitting college, only had college connections, with all of whom 
he renewed his friendship on his return to the mother-country. 
But it is equally true, and this is to his credit, that he long 
hesitated to replace departed friends by neAV ones. 

To conquer this repugnance he required a very high de- 
gree of esteem for the friend he was about to make, a similar- 



The Friendships of Lord Byron. 225 

ity of tastes, and above all a sympathy based upon real good- 
ness. This was the time of his gi-eatest mental depression. 
It preceded that splendid epoch in his life, when his star shone 
with such brilliancy in the literary sphere, thanks to " Childe 
Harold," and in the world of politics through his parliament- 
ary successes, which had earned for him the praises of the 
whole nation. Then did friends present themselves iu scores, 
but out of these few were chosen. 

Among the great men of the day who surrounded him, he 
took to several, and in particular to Lord Holland, a Whig- 
like himself, and a man equally distinguished for the excel- 
lence of his heart as for his rare intellect. Lord Holland's 
hospitality was the pride of England. Byron also conceived 
a likmg for Lord Lansdowne, — the model of eveiy virtue, 
social and domestic ; for Lord Dudley, whose wit so charmed 
him ; for Mr, Douglas Kinnaird, brother to Lord Kinnaird, 
whom Byron called his Biost devoted friend in politics and in 
literature ; for all those first notabilities of the day, Rogers, 
Sheridan, Curran, Mackintosh, for all of whom he may be said 
to have entertained a feeling akin to friendship. But all these 
were friends of the moment ; friends whom the relations of 
every-day life in the world of fashion had brought together, 
and whose talents exacted admiration, and hence he formed 
ties which may be styled friendship, provided the strict sense 
of that word is not understood. Byron felt this more than 
any one. 

One man, however, contrived to get such a hold on his 
mind and heart, that he became truly his friend, and exer- 
cised a salutary influence over him. This man, who contrib- 
uted to dispel the dark clouds which hung over Byron's mind, 
and was the first to charm him in his new life of fashion, was 
no other than Thomas Moore, 

This new intimacy had not, it is true, the freshness of his 
early friendships, formed, as these were, in the freshness of a 
young heart, and therefore without any worldly calculations. 
Moore was even ten years his senior. But his affection for 
Moore, founded as it was upon a similarity of tastes, upon 
mutual reminiscences, esteem and admiration, soon developed 
itself into a friendship which never changed. The circum- 
stances under which Bvron and Moore became friends speak 

K 2 



226 The Friendships of Lord Byron. 

too highly for the credit of both not to be mentioned here, 
and we must therefore say a few words on the subject. 

Byron, as the reader knows, had in his famous satire of 
" EngUsh Bards," etc., attacked the poems of Moore as having 
an immoral tendency. Instead of interpreting the beautiful 
Irish melodies in their figurative sense, Byron had taken the 
direct sense conveyed in their love-inspiring words, and con- 
sidered them as likely to produce effeminate and unhealthy 
impressions. 

" WUo in soft guise, surrounded by a choir 
Of virgins melting, not to Vesta's fire, 
Witli sparkling ej'es, and cheek by passion flush'd, 
Strikes his wild lyre, while listening dames are hush'd? 
'Tis Little ! young Catullus of his day, 
As sweet, but as immoral, in his lay! 

******* 

Yet kind to youth, .... 

She bids thee 'mend thy line and sin no more.'" 

Lord Byron was always of opinion that literature, when it 
tends to exalt the more tender sentiments of our nature, pure 
as these may be, is ever injurious to the preservation of those 
manly and energetic qualities which are so essential for the 
accomplishment of a noble mission here below. This opinion 
is illustrated by the occasional extreme energy of his heroes, 
and by his repugnance to introduce love into his dramas. If 
this reproach oifended Moore a little. Lord Byron's allusion 
to his duel with Jeffrey at Chalk Farm in 1806, where it was 
said that the pistols of each were not loaded, must have wound- 
ed him still more, and he wrote a letter to Lord Byron which 
must, it would seem, have brought on a duel. 

Lord Byron was then travelling in the Levant, and the let- 
ter remained with his agent in London. It was only two years 
after, on his return from his travels, that he received it. An 
exchange of letters Avith Moore took place, and such was the 
" good sense, self-possession and frankness " of Byron's con- 
duct in the matter, that Moore was quite pacified, and all 
chances of a duel disappeared with the reconciliation of both, 
at the request of each. 

The reconciUation took place under the auspices of Rogers, 
and at a dinner given by the latter for that purpose. After 
speaking of his extraordinary beauty, and of the delicacy and 



The Friendships of Lord Byron. 227 

prudence of his conduct, Moore, in referring to this dinner, 
ends by saying, " Such did I find Lord Byron on my first ex- 
perience of him, and such, so open and manly-minded did I 
find him to the last." 

Byron, too, was influenced by the charm of Moore's ac- 
quaintance, and so dear to him became the latter's society 
through that kind of electric current which appears to run 
through some people and forms between them an unbounded 
sympathy, that it actually succeeded in dispelling the sombre 
ideas which then possessed his soul. 

Their similarity of tastes, and at the same time those dif- 
ferences of character which are so essential to the develop- 
ment of the intellect of two sympathetic minds, were admira- 
bly adapted to form the charm which existed in their relations 
with one another. 

This sympathy, however, would never have found a place 
in the mind of Lord Byron had it not sprung from his heart. 
Amiability was essential in his friends before he could love 
them ; and though Moore had not that quality in its highest 
degree, still he had it sufliciently for Lord Byron to say in one 
of his notes, " I have received the most amiable letter possi- 
ble from Moore. I really think him the most kind-hearted 
man I ever met. Besides which, his talents are equal to his 
sentiments." 

His sympathy for Moore was such that the mention of his 
name was enough to awaken his spirits and give him joy. 
This is palpable in his letters to, Moore, which are master- 
pieces of talent. 

His cordial friendship for Moore was never once affected 
by the series of triumphs which followed its formation, and 
which made the whole woi'ld bow before his genius. "The 
new scenes which opened before him with his successes," says 
Moore, " far from detaching us from one another, multiplied, 
on the contrary, the opportunities of meeting each other, and 
thereby strengthening our intimacy." 

This excessive liking for Moore was kept up by all the 
force which constancy lends to affection. One of Byron's 
most remarkable qualities was great constancy in his likes, 
tastes, and a particular attachment to the recollections of his 
childhood. At the age of fifteen, Moore's "Melodies " already 



228 The Friendships of Lord Byron. 

delighted him. " I have just been lookmg over Little Moore's 
Melodies, which I knew by heart at fifteen." In 1 803 he wrote 
from Ravenna : " Hum ! I really believe that aU the bad things 
I ever AVTOte or did are attributable to that rascally book."' 

"We have seen that at Southwell he used even to ask Miss 
Chaworth and Miss Pigott to sing him songs of Moore. At 
Cambridge, what reconciled him to leaving Harrow were the 
hours which he spent with his beloved Edward Long, with 
whom he used to read Moore's poetry after having listened 
to Long's music. 

He already then had a sj-mpathy for Moore, and a wish to 
know him. The latter's place was therefore already marked 
out in Byron's heart, even before he was fortunate enough to 
know him. 

Moore's straitened means often obliged him to leave Lon- 
don. Then Byron was seized with a fit of melancholy. 

"I might be sentimental to-day, but I won't," he said. 
" The truth is that I have done all I can since I am in this 
woi'ld to harden my heart, and have not yet succeeded, though 
there is a good chance of my doing so. 

" 1 Avish your line and mine were a little less parallel, they 
might occasionally meet, which they do not now. 

" I am sometimes inclined to write that I am ill, so as to 
see you arrive in London, where no one was ever so happy to 
see you as I am, and where there is no one I would sooner 
seek consolation from, were I ill." 

Then, according to his hfibitual custom of ever depreciating 
himself morally, he writes to Moore, in answer to the latter's 
compliments about his goodness: "But they say the devil is 
amusing when pleased, and I must have been more venomous 
than the old serpent, to have hissed or stung in your company." 

His sjTQpathy for Moore went so far as to induce him to 
believe that he was capable of every thing that is good. 

"Moore," says he, in his memoranda of 1813, "has a re- 
union of exceptional talents — poetry, music, voice, he has all — 
and an expression of countenance such as no one will ever have. 

" What humor in his poet's bag ! There is nothing that 
Moore can not do if he Avishes. 

" He has but one fault, which I mourn every day— he is 
not here." 



The Friendships of Lord Byron. 229 

He even liked to attribute to Moore successes which the 
latter only owed to himself. Byron had, as the reader knows, 
the most musical of voices. Once heard, it could not be for- 
gotten,* He had never learned music, but his ear was so just, 
that when he hummed a tune his voice was so touching as to 
move one to tears. 

" Not a day passes," he wrote to Moore, " that I don't think 
and speak of you. You can not doubt my sincere admiration, 
waving personal friendship for the present. I have you by 
rote and by heart, of which ecce signumP 

He then goes on to tell him his adventure when at Lady 
O 's :— 

" I have a habit of uttering, to what I think tunes, your 
' Oh, breathe not,' and others ; they are my matins and ves- 
pers. I did not intend them to be overheard, but one morn- 
ing in comes not la Donna, but il Marita, with a very grave 
face, and said, ' Byron, I must request you not to sing any 
more, at least of those songs.' — 'Why?' — 'They make my 
wife cry, and so melancholy that I wish her to hear no more 
of them.' 

" Now, my dear Moore, the effect must have been from 
your words, and certainly not my music." 

To give Moore the benefit of effecting a great success with 
an Oriental poem, Byron gave up his own idea of writing one, 
and sent him some Turkish books. 

" I have been thinking of a story," says he, " grafted on the 
amours of a Peri and a mortal, something like Cayotte's ' Di- 
able Amoureux.' Tenderness is not ray forte; for that reason 
J have given uj) the idea, but I think it a subject you might 
make much of." 

Moore actually wished to write a poem on an Oriental 
subject, but dreaded such a rival as Byron, and expressed his 
fears in writing to him. Byron replied : — 

" Your Peri, ray dear Moore, is sacred and inviolable. I 
have no idea of touching the hem of her petticoat. Your af- 
fectation of a dislike to encounter me is so flattering that I 
begin to think myself a very fine fellow. But it really j)uts me 
out of humor to hear you talk thus." 

* Lord Holland's youiifrest son, in speaking of BjTon, styled him '"the gen- 
tleman with the beautiful voice." 



230 The Friendships of Lord Byron. 

Not only did Byron encourage Moore in his task, but ef- 
faced himself completely in order to make room for him. 

When he published the " Bride of Abydos," Moore remark- 
ed that there existed some connection in that poem with an 
incident he had to introduce in his own poem of "Lalla 
Rookh." He wrote thereupon to Byron to say that he would 
stop his own work, because to aspire after him to describe 
the energy of passion would be the work of a Caesar. 

Byron replied : — 

" I see in you what I never saw in poet before, a strange 
diffidence of your own powers, which I can not account for, 
and which must be unaccountable when a Cossack like me can 
appall a cuirassier. 

" Go on — I shall really be very unhappy if I at all inter- 
fere with you. The success of mine is yet problematical. . . 
Come out, screw your courage to the sticking-place — no man 
stands higher, whatever you may think on a rainy day in your 
provincial I'etreat." 

To Moore he dedicated his " Corsair," and to read the 
preface is to see how sincerely attached Byron was to his 
friend. 

When at Venice he heard of some domestic affliction which 
had befallen Moore ; he wrote to him with that admirable 
simplicity of style which can not be imitated, because the 
true accents of the heart defy imitation, 

" Your domestic afflictions distress me sincerely ; and, as 
far as you are concerned, my feelings will always reach the 
furthest limits to which I may still venture. Throughout life 
your losses shall be mine, your gains mine also, and, however 
much I may lose in sensibility, there will always remain a 
drop of it for you." 

When Moore obtained his greatest success, and arrived at 
the summit of populai'ity, by the publication of " Lalla Rookh," 
Byron's pleasure was equal to the encouragements he had 
given him. But of his noble soul, in which no feeling of 
jealousy could enter, we shall speak elsewhere. Here, in con- 
clusion, I must add that his friendship for Moore remained 
stanch through time and circumstances, and even notwith- 
standing Moore's wi'ongs toward him, of which I shall speak 
in another chapter. 



The Friendships of Lord Byron. 231 

In treating of Byron's friendships, I have endeavored to 
in set forth the wrongs which some of his friends, and Moore 
particular, have committed against him both before and after 
his death. 

If, as Moore observes, it be triie that Byron never lost a 
friend, was their friendship a like friendship Avith his own ? 
Plas it ever gone so far as to make sacrifices for his sake, and 
has not Lord Byron ever given more as a friend than he ever 
received in return ? Had he found in his friendship among 
men that reciprocity of feeling which he ever found among 
women, would so many injuries and calumnies have been heap- 
ed upon his head ? Would not his friends, had they shown a 
little more warmth of affection, have been able to silence those 
numerous rivals who rendered his life a burden to him ? Had 
they been conscientious in their opinions, they would certainly 
not have drawn upon them the rather bitter lines in " Childe 
Harold:" — 

"I do believe, 
Though I have found them not, that there may be 
Words which are things, hopes which will not deceive, 
And virtues which are merciful, nor weave 
Snares for the failing ; I would also deem 
O'er others' griefs that some sincerely grieve, 
That two, or one, are almost what they seem, 
That goodness is no name, and happiness no dream." 

And later, in " Don Juan," Byron would not have said with 
a smile, but also with a pain which sprang from the heart : — 

"0 Job! you l\fid two friends: one's quite enough, 
Especially when we are ill at ease ; 
They are but bad pilots when the weather's rough. 
Doctors less famous for their cures than fees. 

Let no man grumble when his friends fall off. 
As thejr will do like leaves at the first breeze ; 

When j'our affairs come round, one way or t'other, 
Go to the coffee-house and take another." 

It is, however, also true that he would not have had the 
opportunity of showing us so perfectly the beauty of his 
mind, and his admirable constancy, notwithstanding the con- 
duct of those on whom he had bestowed his friendship. This 
constancy is shown even by his own words, for immediately 
after the lines quoted above, he adds : — 

" But this is not my maxim ; had it been, 
Some heart-aches had been spared me." 



232 Lord Byron as a Father, 



CHAPTER VII. 

LORD BYRON CONSIDERED AS A FATHER, AS A BROTHER, 

AND AS A SON. 

HIS GOODNESS SHOWN BY THE STRENGTH OF HIS IN- 
STINCTIVE AFFECTIONS. 

LORD BYEON AS A FATHER. 

If, as a great moralist has said, our natural affections have 
power only upon sensitive and virtuous natures, but are de- 
spised by men of corrupt and dissipated habits, then must we 
find a proof again of Lord Byron's excellence in the influence 
which his affections exercised over him. 

His tenderness for his child, and for his sister, was like a 
ray of sunshine which lit up his whole heart, and in the mo- 
ments of greatest depression prevented desolation from com- 
pletely absorbing his nature. 

His thoughts were never far from the objects of his affec- 
tion. 

CXV. 

"My daughter! with thj' name this song begun; 

My daughter I with thy name thus much shall end; 

I see thee not, I hear thee not, but none 

Can be so wrapt in thee ; thou art the friend 

To whom the shadows of far years extend : 

Albeit my brow thou never shouldst behold, 

My voice shall with thy future visions blend, 

And reach into thy heart, when mine is cold, 
A token and a tone, even from thy father's mould. 



" To aid thy mind's development, to watch 
Thy dawn of little joj'S, to sit and see 
Almost thy very growth, to view thee catch 
Knowledge of objects, — wonders yet to thee! 
To hold thee lightlj' on a gentle knee. 
And print on thy soft cheek a parent's kiss, 
This, it should seem, was not reserved for me, 
Yet this was in my nature : as it is, 

I know not what is there, yet something like to this. 



As A Brother, and as a Son. 233 



"Sweet be thy cradled slumbers! O'er the sea 

And from the mountains where I now respire, 

Fain would I waft such blessing upon thee, 
As, with a sigh, I deem thou might'st have been to me." 

Who ever read " Childe Harold " and was not touched by 
the delightful stanzas of the third canto, — a perfect chef- 
cfceuvre of tendei'ness and kindness, inclosed, as it were, in 
another master-piece, like, were it possible, a jewel found in 
a diamond? 

Those only, however, who lived with him in Greece and in 
Italy are able to bear witness to his patei'nal tenderness. This 
sentiment really developed itself on his leaving England, and 
only appears from that time forward in his poems. Byron 
loved all children, but his heart beat really when he met chil- 
dren of Ada's age. 

Hearing at Venice that Moore had lost a child, he wrote to 
him, " I enter fully into your misery, for I feel myself entire- 
ly absorbed in my children. I have such tenderness for my 
little Ada." 

Both at Ravenna and at Pisa he was miserable if he did 
not hear from Ada. Whenever he received any portraits of 
her or a piece of her hair, these were solemn days of rejoicing 
for him, but they usually increased his melancholy. When 
in Greece he heard of Ada's illness, he was seized with such 
anxiety that he could no longer give his attention to any thing. 
" His journal (which, by-the-by, was lost or destroyed after 
his death) was interrupted on account of the news of his 
child's illness," says Count Gamba, in his narrative of Byron's 
last voyage to Greece. 

The thought of his child was ever present to him when 
he wrote, and she was the centre of all his hopes and his 
fears. 

The persecution to which he was subjected for having writ- 
ten " Don Juan," having made him fear one day at Pisa that 
its effect upon his daughter might be to diminish her affec- 
tion for him, he said : — 

" I am so jealous of my daughter's entire sympathy, that,, 
were this work, ' Don Juan ' — (written to while away hours 
of pain and sorrow), — to diminish her affection for me, I 



234 Lord Byron as a Father, 

would never write a word more ; and would to God I had 
not written a word of it !" 

He likewise said that he was often wont to think of the 
time when his daughter would know her father by his works. 
"Then," said he, "shall I triumph, and the tears which my 
daughter will then shed, together with the knowledge that she 
will share the feelings with which the various allusions to her- 
self and me have been written, Avill console me^in my darkest 
hours. Ada's mother may have enjoyed the smiles of her 
youth and childhood, but the tears of her maturer age will be 
for me." 

He distinctly foresaw that his daughter would be brought 
up to look indifferently upon her father ; but he never could 
have believed that such means would be adopted, as were 
used, to alienate from him the heart of his own child. We 
will give one instance only, mentioned by Colonel Wildman, 
the companion and friend of Byron, who had bought New- 
stead, of which he took the most religious care. Having in 
London made the acquaintance of Ada, then Lady Lovelace, 
the colonel invited her to pay a visit to the late residence of 
her illustrious father, and she went to see it sixteen months 
before Byi'on's death. As Lady Lovelace was looking over 
the library one morning, the colonel took a book of poems and 
read out a poem with all the force of the soul and heart. 
Lady Lovelace, in rapture with this poem, asked the name of 
its writer. " There he is," said the colonel, pointing to a por- 
trait of Byron, painted by Phillips, which hung over the wall, 
and he accompanied his gesture by certain remarks which 
showed what he felt at the ignorance of the daughter. Lady 
Lovelace remained stupefied, and, from that moment, a kind 
of revolution took place in her feelings toward her father. 
" Do not think, colonel," she said, " that it is affectation in me 
to declare that I have been brought up in complete ignorance 
of all that concerned my father." 

Never had Lady Lovelace seen even the writing of her fa- 
ther ; and it was Murray who showed it to her for the first 
time. 

From that moment an enthusiasm for her father filled her 
whole soul. She shut herself up for hours in the rooms which 
lie had inhabited, and which were still filled with the things 



As A Brother, and as a Son. 235 

which he had used. Here she devoted herself to her favorite 
studies. She chose to sleep in the apartments which were 
most particularly hallowed by the reminiscences of her father, 
and appeared never to have been happier than during this stay 
at Newstead, absorbed as she had become for the first time in 
all the glory of him whose tenderness for her had been so care- 
fully concealed from her. From that time all appeared insip- 
id and tasteless to her ; existence became a pain. Every thing 
told her of her father's renown, and nothing could replace it. 
All these feelings so possessed her that she fell ill, and when 
she was on the point of death she wrote to Colonel Wildman 
to beg that she might be buried next to her illustrious father. 
There, in the modest village church of Hucknell, lie the father 
and the daughter, who, separated from one another during 
their lifetime, became united in death, and thus were realized, 
in a truly prophetic way, the words which close the admirable 
third canto of " Childe Harold's Pilgrimage." Words of con- 
solation for those who loved Byron, and whom religion and 
philosophy inspire with hope ; for they think that, despite his 
enemies, this union of their mortal remains must be the sym- 
bol of their union above, and that the prophetic sense of the 
words pronounced in the agony of despair will be realized by 
an eternal happiness. 



"Yet, though dull Hate as duty should be taught, 
I know that thou wilt love me; though my name 
Should be shut from thee, as a spell still fraught 
With desolation, and a broken claim : 
Though the grave closed between us, — 'twere the same, 
I know that thou wilt love me; though to di'ain 
My blood from out thy being were an aim 
And an attainment, — all would be in vain, — 
Still thou would'st love me, still that more than life retain." 

LORD BYRON AS A BROTHER. 

• 

Fraternal love was no less conspicuous in him than his pa- 
ternal affection. It may be easily conceived how great must 
have been the influence over one who cared so much for friends 
in general, of that affection which is the perfection of love, 
and, at the same time, the most delicate, peaceful, and charm- 
ing of sentiments. Such a love has neither misunderstand- 



236 Lord Byron as a Father, 

ings to dread, uor misrepresentations to fear. It is above the 
caprices, ennui, and changes which often rule the friendships 
of our choice. 

From his return from his first travels in the East, to the 
time of his publishing the first two cantos of " Childe Harold," 
Byron may be said not to have known his sister. The daugh- 
ter of another mother, and older by several years than him- 
self, — living as she did with relations of her mother, brought 
xip as she was by her grandmother, Lady Carmarthen, and 
married as she had been at an early age to the Hon. Colonel 
Leigh, Lord Byron had had very few opportunities of seeing 
her. It was only on his return from the East that he began 
to have some correspondence with her, on the occasion of his 
publication of " Childe Harold." Notwithstanding all these 
circumstances, which might tend to lessen in him his love for 
his sister, his affection for her on the contrary increased. 

The i-eader has observed that about this time, under the 
pressure of repeated sorrows, a shade of misanthropy had 
spread itself over his character, notwithstanding that such a 
failing was totally contrary to his nature. The acquaintance 
with his sister helped greatly to dispel this veil, and, thanks 
to it^ he was able to get rid of the first sorrowful impressions 
of youth. 

His dear Augusta became the confidant of his heart ; and 
his pen on the one hand, and his sister on the other, were the 
means of curing him of all ills. Her influence over him is 
shown by the love expressed for her in his letters and his 
notes at that time, and her prudent advice often puts to flight 
the more unruly dictates of his imagination. Thus, on one 
occasion, Mrs. Musters (Miss Chaworth) wrote to ask Byron 
to come and see her. She was miserable that she had pre- 
ferred her husband to the handsome young man now the cele- 
brated Byron. Byron is tempted to go and see her ; he loved 
her so dearly when a boy. But Augusta thought it dangerous 
that he should go and see her, and Byron does not. 

"Augusta wishes that I shovild be reconciled with Lord 
Carlisle," he says. " I have refused this to every body, but 
I can not to my sister. I shall, therefore, have to do it, 
though I had as lief ' DrinS up Esil,' or ' eat a crocodile,' " 

" We will see. Ward, the Hollands, the Lambs, Rogers, 



As A Brother, and as a Son. 237 

every one has, raore or less, tried to settle these matters dur- 
ing the past two years, but unsuccessfully ; if Augusta suc- 
ceeds it Avill be odd, and I shall laugh." 

To refuse his sister any thing was out of the question. 
He loved her so much that the least likeness to her in any 
Avoman was enough to attract his sympathy. If ill, he would 
not have his sister know it; if she was unwell, he can not 
rest until he received better accounts of her health. Nothing, 
however, shows better his love for her than the lines with 
which she inspired him at the time of his deepest distress ; 
that is, on leaving England for Switzerland. I can not tran- 
scribe them altogether, but I can not refuse myself the satis- 
faction of quoting some extracts from them. 



"When all around grew drear and dark, 
And reason half withheld her ray — 
And hope but shed a dying spark, 
Which more misled my lonely waj', 

Thou wert the solitary star 

Which rose and set not to the la^t. 



' Oh ! blest be thine unbroken light ! 

That watch'd me as a seraph's ej'e, 
And stood between me and the night, 
Forever shining sweetly nigh. 



"Still may the spirit dwell on mine, 

And teach it what to brave or brook ; 
There's more in one soft word of thine 
Than in the world's defied rebuke." 



Again, 



"Though human, thou didst not deceive mc, 

Though woman, thou didst not forsake. 
Though loved, though forborest to grieve me, 

Though slandered, thou never couldst shake, 
Though trusted, thou didst not disclaim me, 

Though parted, it was not to fl}-. 
Though watchful, 'twas not to defame me, 

Nor, mute, that the world might belie. 
****** 
"From the wreck of the past, which hath perish'd, 

Thus much I at least ma}' recall. 
It hath taught me that what I most cherish'd 

Deserved to be dearest of all." 



238 Lord Byron as a Father, 

This deep fraternal affection, assumed at times under the 
influence of his powerful genius, and under exceptional cir- 
cumstances an almost too passionate expression, which open- 
ed a fresh field to his enemies. But it was to him a consola- 
tion and a benefit, which did him good throughout his short 
career; and even at the times when troubles came pouring 
down upon him, the love of his sister, though not sufiicient to 
give him courage enough to bear up, still always appeared to 
him as a hope and an encouragement to do well. 

LORD BTEON AS A SON. 

The two sentiments of which we have just spoken were so 
strong and so proved in Lord Byron, that it would be almost 
useless to speak of them, were it not for the pleasure Avhich 
there is in recalling them. 

But there is another natural affection which, though less 
manifested, was not less felt by Byron ; I mean his filial love. 

Many biographers, and Moore at their head, have not, for 
reasons to which I have alluded in another chapter, been fair 
to his mother. Besides the motives which seem always to 
have actuated them in the exaggeration of his faults, and of the 
smallest particulars of his life, they wished, I believe, to give 
to their narrative a more amusing character. Moore would 
seem to say that Byron's childhood was badly directed ; but 
how so ? Does he mean that his mother did not justly appre- 
ciate the peculiarities of her child's character, or promote the 
fine dispositions of his nature? But such a discernment in 
parents is matter of rare occurrence, and can it be said that 
many known characters have been handled according to the 
scientific rules here laid down ? Those who speak of these 
fine theories would, we fear, be rather puzzled by their appli- 
cation, were they called to do so. 

It is matter of note that Byron was surrounded as a child 
with the tenderest care. At a very early age he was handed 
over, by his over-indulgent mother and nurses, to most respect- 
able, intelligent, and devoted masters ; and at no time of his 
youth was either his physical, intellectual, or moral education 
ever neglected. I may add that Byron's mother was respect- 
ed, both as a wife and as a Mother. She was an heiress be- 
longing to a most ancient Scotch family, and closely allied to 



As A Brother, and as a Son. 239 

the royal house of Stuai't, and was the second wife of the 
youngest son of Admiral Byron, — an unusually handsome man, 
and father to the poet. 

Though this man had been rather spoiled by the world, 
and had not rendered her life perfectly happy, she loved him 
passionately, and was most devoted to him. When he died, 
four years after their marriage, her grief was such that it com- 
pletely changed her nature. 

A widow at twenty-three, she centred in her only child all 
the depth of her affection, and though her fortune was consid- 
erably reduced, she still had enough to render her child's life 
comfortable, so that his education did not suffer by it. He was 
scarcely six years of age when he succeeded to the barony of 
his great-uncle, and this circumstance in a young Englishman's 
life always means increased prosperity. His childhood was, 
therefore, most decidedly fortunate in many respects. This is 
all the more certain that Byron, throughout his life, always 
spoke of his happy childhood, and that his ideal of human hap- 
piness never seems to have been realized except at that time. 

But, notwithstanding Moore's exaggerations, and the ex- 
cessive kindness of his mother, whose whole life was centred 
in the one thought of amusing her child, it is very likely that 
Byron's passionate nature may have rendered his relations at 
home less agreeable than they might have been. However 
much this may have been the case, it is still more certain that 
such little family dissensions never produced in his mind the 
slightest germ of ingratitude toward or want of care for his 
mother, and that the recollection of his passionate moments 
only served to make him acquire by his own efforts that won- 
dei'ful self-possession for which he was afterward remarkable. 

His filial sentiments betrayed themselves at every period, 
and in every circumstance of his life. The reader has seen 
how, at Harrow, by showing the names of their parents writ- 
ten on the wall, he prevented his comrades from setting fire 
to the school. 

On attaining his majority, his first care was to improve the 
financial condition of his mother, notwithstanding the shatter- 
ed state of his fortune, and to prepare a suitable apartment 
for her at Newstead. 

When the cruel criticisms of the "Edinburgh Review' 



240 Lord Byron as a Father, 

condemned his first steps in the career of literature, his chief 
care after the first explosion of his own sorrow, was to allay, 
as far as he could, the sensitiveness of his mother, who, not 
having the same motive or power to summon up a spirit of 
resistance, was, of course, more helplessly alive to this attack 
upon his fame, and felt it far more than, after the first burst 
of indignation, he did himself. 

During his first travels to the East his affairs were in a 
very embarrassed state. But, nevertheless, here are the terms 
in which he wrote to his mother from Constantinople : — 

" If you have occasion for any pecuniary supply, pray use 
my funds as far as they go, without reserve ; and, lest this 

should not be enough, in my next to Mr. H 1 will direct 

him to advance any sum you may want." 

There is a degree of melancholy in the letter which he wrote 
to his mother on his return to England. He had received 
most deplorable accounts of his affairs when at Malta, and he 
applied the terms apathy and indifference to the sentiments 
with which he approached his native land. He goes on to 
say, however, that the word apathy is not to be applied to his 
mother, as he will show ; that he wishes her to be the mistress 
of Newstead, and to consider him only as the visitor. He 
brings her presents of all kinds, etc. " That notwithstand- 
ing this alienation," adds Moore, "which her own unfortunate 
temper produced, he should have continued to consult her 
wishes, and minister to her comforts with such unfailing 
thoughtfulness (as is evinced not only in the frequency of his 
letters, but in the almost exclusive appropriation of Newstead 
to her use), redoimds in no ordinary degree to his honor." 

This want of affection never existed but in the minds of 
some of Byron's biographers. Lord Byron knew that his 
mother doted upon him, and that she watched his growing 
fame with feverish anxiety. 

His successes Avere passionately looked forward to by her. 
She had collected in one volume all the articles which had ap- 
peared upon his first poems and satires, and had written her 
own remarks in the margin, which showed that she was pos- 
sessed of great good sense and considerable talent. Could, 
then, such a heart as Lord Byron's be ungrateful, and not love 
such a mother ? Mr. Gait, a biographer of Byron's, who is cer- 



As A Brother, and as a Son. 241 

tainly not to be suspected of partiality, renders him, however, 
full justice in regard to his filial devotion during the life of his 
mother, and to the deep distress which he felt at her death. 

" In the mean time, while busily engaged in his literary 
projects with Mr. Dallas, and in law affairs with his agent, 
he was suddenly summoned to Newstead by the state of his 
mother's health. Before he reached the Abbey she had 
breathed her last. The event deeply affected him. Notwith- 
standing her violent temper, her affection for him had been 
so fond and ardent that he undoubtedly returned it with Tin- 
affected sincerity ; and, from many casual and incidental ex- 
pressions which I have heard him employ concerning her, I 
am persuaded that this filial love was not at any time even of 
an ordinary kind." 

On the night after his arrival at the Abbey, the waiting- 
woman of Mrs. Byron, in passing the door of the room where 
the corpse lay, heard the sound of some one sighing heavily 
within, and, on entering, found his lordship sitting in the dark 
beside the bed. She remonstrated, when he burst into tears, 
and exclaimed, " I had but one friend in the world, and she is 
gone !" This same filial devotion often inspired him with 
beautiful lines, such as those in the third canto of " Childe 
Harold," when standing before the tomb of Julia Alpinula, he 
exclaims : 

LXVl. 

"And there — oh! sweet and sacred be the name! — 
Julia — the daughter, the devoted — gave 
Her youth to Heaven ; her heart, beneath a claim 
Nearest to Heaven's, broke o'er a father's grave. 
Justice is sworn 'gainst tears, and hers would crave 
The life she lived in ; but the Judge was just, 
And then she died on him she could not save. 
Their tomb was simple, and without a bust, 

And held within their urn one mind, one heart, one dust. 



" But these are deeds which should not pass awaj-, 
And names that must not wither, though the earth 
Forgets her empires with a just decay. 
The enslavers and the enslaved, their death and birth 
The high, the mountain-majestj' of worth 
Should be, and shall, survivor of its woe, 
And from its immortality look forth • 
In the sun's face, like yonder Alpine snow, 

Imperishablv pure bevond all things below.'" 

L 



242 Lord Byron as a Father, 

As a note to the above, Byron writes : 

" Julia Alpinula, a young Aventian priestess, died soon after 
a vain attempt to save her father, condemned to death as a trai- 
tor by Aulus Coecina. Her epitaph was discovered many years 
ago ; it is thus : 

" JULIA ALPINUTLA : 

HIC JACEO. 

INFELICIS PATRIS, INFELIX PROLES. 

DE^. AVENTLE SACERDOS. 

EXORARE PATRIS NECEM NON POTUI : 

MALE MORI IN FATIS ILLE ERAT. 

VIXI ANNOS XXIII. 

*' I know," adds Byron, " of no human composition so af- 
fecting as this, nor a history of deeper interest. These are 
the names and actions which ought not to perish, and to which 
we turn with a true and healthy tenderness." 

His father having died in 1793, when Byron was only four 
years of age, he could not know him ; but to show how keen 
were his sentiments toward his memory, I must transcribe a 
note of Murray's after the following lines in " Hours of Idle- 
ness :" — 

" Stern Death forbade mj- orphan youth to share 
The tender guidance of a father's care ; 
Can rank, or e'en a guardian's name supply 
The love which glistens in a father's eye ?" 

" In all the biographies which have yet been published of 
Byron," remarks Murray, " undue severity has been the light 
by which the character of Byron's father has been judged. 
Like his son, he was unfortunately brought up by a mother 
only. Admiral Byron, his father, being compelled by his du- 
ties to live away from his family, the son was brought up in a 
French military academy, which was not likely at that time to 
do his morals much good. He passed from school into the 
Coldstream Guards, where he was launched into every spe- 
cies of temptation imaginable, and likely to present themselves 
to a young man of singular beauty, and heir to a fine name, in 
the metropolis of England." 

The unfortunate intrigue, of which so much has been said, 

■ as if it had compromised his reputation as a man of honor, 

took place when he was just of age, and he died in France at 

the age of thirty-five. One can hardly iinderstand why the 



As A. Brother, and as a Son. 243 

biographers of Byron have insisted upon depreciating the 
personal qualities of his father, apart from the jDOsitively in- 
jurious and wicked assertions made against him in memoirs 
of Lord Byron's life, and in reviews of such memoirs. 

Some severe reflections of this kind having found their way 
into the preface to a French translation of Byron's works, 
which appeared shortly before the latter's departure for 
Greece, called for an expostulation by the son himself on be- 
half of his father, in a letter addressed to Mr. Coulmann, M^ho 
had been charged to offer to the poet the homage of the 
French literaiy men of the day. This letter is interesting in 
more than one particular, as it re-establishes in their true light 
several facts wrongly stated with regard to Byron's family, 
and because it is, perhaps, the last letter which Byron wrote 
from Italy. It is quoted in extenso in the chapter entitled 
" Byron's Life in Italy."* I can only repeat here the words 
which apply more particularly to his father : — 

" The author of the essay (M. Pichot) has cruelly calumni- 
ated my father. Far from being brutal, he was, according to 
the testimony of all those who knew him, extremely amiable, 
and of a lively character, though careless and dissipated. He 
had the reputation of being a good oflicer, and had proved 
himself such in America. The facts themselves belie the as- 
sertion. It IS not by brutal means that a young oflUcer seduces 
and elopes with a marchioness, and then marries two heiresses 
in succession. It is true that he was young, and very hand- 
some, which is a great point. 

" His first wife, Lady Conyers, Marchioness of Carmarthen, 
did not die of a broken heart, but of an illness which she 
contracted because she insisted on following my father ont 
hunting before she had completely recovered from her con- 
finement, immediately after the birth of my sister Augusta. 
His second wife, my mother, who claims every respect, had, I 
assure you, far too proud a nature ever to stand ill-1,reatment 
from any body, and would have proved it had it been the 
case. I must add, that my father lived a long time in Paris, 
where he saw a great deal of the Marechal de Biron, the com- 
mander of the French Guards, who, from the similarity of our 

* This chapter is to be published separately, at no very distant period, by the 
author. — Xofe 'if the tran^lntor. 



244 Lord Byron as a Father, Etc. 

names, and of our Norman extraction, believed himself to be 
our cousin. My father died at thirty-seven years of age, and 
whatever faults he may have had, cruelty was not one of 
them. If the essay were to be circulated in England, I am 
sure that the part relating to my father would pain my sister 
Augusta even more than myself, and she does not deserve it ; 
for there is not 'a more angelic being on earth. Both Au- 
gusta and I have always cherished the memory of our father 
as much as we cherished one another, — a proof, at least, that 
we had no recollection of any harsh treatment on his part. 
If he dissipated his fortune, that concerns us, since we are his 
heirs ; but until we reproach him with the facit, I know of no 
one who has a right to do so. Bykon." 

From all that has been said it will be seen that Byron's 
sensitive heart was eminently adapted to family affections. 
Affection alone made him happy, and his nature craved for 
it. He was often rather influenced by passion than a seeker 
of its pleasures, and whenever he found relief in the satisfac- 
tion of his passions, it was only because there was real affec- 
tion at the bottom, — an affection which tended to give him 
those pleasures of intimacy in which he delighted. 



Qualities of Lord Byron's Heart. 245 



CHAPTER Vin. 

QUALITIES OF LORD BYROn's HEART. 

Gratitude, — that honesty of the soul which is even great- 
er than social honesty, since it is regulated by no express law, 
and that most uncommon virtue, since it proscribes selfish- 
ness, — was pre-eminently conspicuous in Lord Byron. 

To forget a kindness done, a service rendered, or a good- 
natured proceeding, was for him an impossibility. The mem- 
ories of his heart were even more astonishing than those of 
his mind. 

His affection for his nurses, for his masters, for all those 
who had taken care of him when a boy, is well known ; and 
how great was his gratitude for all that Doctor Drury had 
done for him ! His eai'ly poems are full of it. His grateful 
affection for Drury he felt until his last hour. 

This quality was so strong in him, that it not only permit- 
ted him to forget all past offenses, but even rendered him 
blind to any fresh wrongs. It sufficed to have been kind to 
him once, to claim his indulgence. The reader remembers 
that Jeffrey had been the most cruel of the persecutors of 
his early poems, but that later he had shown more impartial- 
ity. This act of justice appeared to Byron a generous act^ 
and one sufficient for him in return to forget all the harm 
done to him in the past. We accordingly find in his mem- 
oranda of 1814 : — 

"It does honor to the editor (Jeffrey), because he once 
abused me : many a man will retract praise ; none but a high- 
spirited mind will revoke its censure, or can praise the man 
it has once attacked." 

Yet Jeffrey, who was eminently a critic, gave fresh causes 
of displeasure to Byron at a later p(iRod, and then it was that 
he forgot the present on recalling the past. 

In speaking of this Scotch critic, he considered himself 
quite disarmed. When at Venice, he heard that he had been 



246 Qualities of Lord Byron's Heart. 

attacked about Coleridge in the ** Edinbui'gh Review," he 
wrote as follows to Murray : — 

"The article in the 'Edinburgh Review' on Coleridge, 
I have not seen ; but whether I am attacked in it or not, or 
in any other of the same journal, I shall never think ill of Mi\ 
Jeffrey on that account, nor forget that his conduct toward 
me has been certainly most handsome during the last four or 
more years."* 

And instead of complaining of this attack, he laughed at 
it with Moore : — 

"The 'Edinburgh Review' had attacked me. . . . Et tu, 
Jeffrey ! ' there is nothing but roguery in villainous man.' 
But I absolve him of all attacks, present and future ; for I 
think he had already pushed his clemency in my behoof to 
the utmost, and I shall always think well of him. I only won- 
der he did not begin before, as my domestic destruction was 
a fine opening for all who wished to avail themselves of the 
opportunity."! 

His great sympathy for Walter Scott became quite enthu- 
siastic, owing also to a feeling of gratitude for a service ren- 
dered to him by Scott. Shortly after his arrival in Italy, and 
the pubUcation of the third canto of " Childe Harold," public 
opinion in England went completely against him, and an arti- 
cle appeared in the "Quarterly Review," by an anonymous 
pen, in his defense. Byron was so touched by this, that he 
endeavored to find out the name of its writer. 

" I can not," he said to Murray, " express myself better than 
in the words of my sister Augusta, who (speaking of it) says, 
' that it is wn-itten in a spirit of the most feeling and kind na- 
ture.' It is, however, something more : it seems to me (as far 
as the subject of it may be permitted to judge) to be very 
well written as a composition, and I think will do the journal 
no discredit ; because, even those who condemn its partiality, 
must praise its generosity. The temptations to take another 
and a less favorable view of the question have been so great 
and numerous, that what with public opinion, politics, etc., 
he must be a gallant as well as a good man, who has ventured 
in that jalace, and at this time, to write such an article even 
anonymously. 

* Moore, Letter 261. t Venice, 1817. 



Qualities of Lord Byron's Heart. 247 

" Perhaps, some day or other, yoii will know or tell me the 
writer's name. Be assured, had the article been a harsh one, 
I should not have asked it." 

He afterward learnt that the article had been written by 
Walter Scott, and his sympathy was so increased by his grat- 
itude for the service rendered, that he never after seemed 
happier than when he could extol Scott's talents and kindness. 

Gratitude, which often weighs upon one as a duty, so cap- 
tivated his soul, that the remembrance of the kindness done 
to him was wont to turn into an affectionate devotion, which 
time could not change. Long after the appearance of the 
article, he wrote as follows to Scott from Pisa : — 

" I owe to you far more than the usual obligations for the 
courtesies of literature and common friendship, for you went 
out of your way in 1817 to do me a service, when it requii'ed, 
not merely kindness, but courage to do so ; to have been men- 
tioned by you, in such a manner, would have been a proud 
memorial at any time, but at such a time, ' when all the world 
and his wife,' as the proverb goes, were trying to trample 
upon me, was something still more complimentary to my self- 
esteem. Had it been a common criticism, however eloquent 
or panegyrical, I should have felt pleased, undoubtedly, and 
grateful, but not to the extent which the extraordinary good- 
heartedness of the whole proceeding must induce in any mind 
capable of such sensations. The very tardiness of this ac- 
knowledgment will, at least, show that I have not forgotten 
the obligation ; and I can assure you, that my sense of it has 
been out at compound interest during the delay." 

Gratitude, with him, was oftentimes a magnifying-glass 
which he used when he had to appreciate certain merits. No 
doubt Gifford was a judicious, clear-sighted, and impartial 
critic, but Byron extolled him as an oracle of good taste, and 
submitted like a child to his decisions. 

Gratitude levelled every social condition in his eyes, as we 
may see by his correspondence with Murray, where the proud 
aristocrat considers his publisher on a par with himself. 
Moore marvelled at this ; but Moore forgets that Murray was 
no ordinary publishei', and that, generous by nature, he made 
to Byron on one occasion, in 1815, when the noble poet was in 
great difficulties, the handsomest offers. Lord Byron refused 



248 Qualities of Lord Byron's Heart. 

them ; but the act was so noble, that its impression was never 
effaced from Byron's mind, and modified the nature of their 
relations. 

When he had recovered his fortune, he wrote to Murray 
from Ravenna : — " I only know of three men who would have 
raised a finger on my behalf ; and one of those is yourself. 
It was in 1815, when I was not even sure of a five-pound 
note. I refused your offer, but have preserved the recollec- 
tion of it, though you may have lost it." 

To calculate the degree of gratitude due to a service ren- 
dered, would have seemed ingratitude in his eyes. He could 
create beings who were capable of doling it out in that way, 
but to apply it to himself was an impossibility. 

His predilection for the inhabitants of Epirus, of Albania, 
and for the Suliotes, is known. This predilection originated 
in the gratitude which he felt for the care taken of him by 
two Albanian servants who doted on him, during an illness 
which he had at Patras at the time when be visited that j^lace 
for the first time. It was also on the Albanian coast that he 
was wrecked on one occasion, and where he received that hos- 
pitality which he has immortalized in Don Juan. 

Byron's predilection for this, people even overcame the ef- 
fects which their ingratitude might have produced, for it is 
matter of history, how badly the barbarous Suliotes behaved 
to him at Missolonghi a short time before his death ; they 
who had been so benefited by his kindness to them. 

The memory of services done to him was not susceptible 
of change, and neither time nor distance could in the least af- 
fect it. The moment he ha^ contracted a debt of gratitude, 
he believed himself obliged to pay interest upon it all his life, 
even had he discharged his debt. One single anecdote will 
sei've to illustrate the truth of these remarks. On the eve of 
his last departure from London in 1816, when the cruelty of 
his enemies, powerfully seconded by the spite of Lady Byron, 
had succeeded in so perverting facts as to give their calum- 
nies the color of truth, and to throw upon his conduct as a 
husband so false a light as to hold him up to universal exe- 
cration, it required great courage to venture on his defense. 
Lady Jersey did it. She — who was then quite the mistress 
of fashion by her beauty, her youth, her rank, her fortune, 



Qualities of Lord Byron's Heart. 249 

and her irreproachable conduct — organized a fete in lionor of 
Byron, and invited all that was most distinguished in London 
to come and wish Byron farewell. 

Among those who responded to the noble courage of Lady 
Jersey was one equally deserving of j^raise, Miss Mercer, now 

Lady K . This conduct of Miss Mercer was all the more 

creditable that there had been a question of her marriage 
with Lord Byron, and that Miss Milbank had been jDreferred 
to her. 

This party gave Byron a great insight into the human 
heart, and showed him all its beauty and all its baseness. 
The reflections which it caused him to make, and the frank 
account he gave of it in his memoirs — (the loss of which can 
never be too much regretted) — would not have pleased his 
survivors. This was unquestionably a powei-ful reason why 
the memoirs were destroyed. But Byron cared not so much 
for the painful portion of this recollection, as he loved to re- 
member the noble conduct of these two ladies. 

" How often he spoke to me of Lady Jersey, of her beau- 
ty and her goodness," say? Madame G . "As to Miss 

M ," he said, " she was a woman of elevated ideas, who 

had shown him more friendship than he deserved." 

One of the noblest tributes of gratitude and admiration 
whicli can be rendered to a woman was paid by Lord Byron 
to Miss Mercer. As he was embarking at Dover, Byron turn- 
ed round to .Mr. Scr.oope Davies, who was with him, and giv- 
ing him a little -parcel which he had forgotten to give her 
when in London, he added : " Tell her that had I been fortu- 
nate enough to marry a woman like her, I should not now be 
obliged to exile myself from my country." 

"If," pursues Arthur Dudley (evidently a name adopted 
by a very distinguished woman biographer), "the rare in- 
stances of devotion which he met in life reconciled him to 
humanity, with what touching glory used he not to repay it. 
The last accents of the illustrious fugitive will not be forgot- 
ten, and history will pi-eserve through centuries the name of 
her to whom Byron at such a time could send so flattering a 
message." 

But, as if all this were not enough, he actually consecrated 
in verse, a short time before his death, the memory of his 

L 2 



250 Qualities of Lord Byron's Heart. 

gratitude to the noble women who had done so much honor 
to their sex : — 

" I've also seen some {emale finends ('tis odd, 

But true — as, if expedient, I could prove), 
That faithful were througli thick and thin abroad, 

At home, far more tlian ever yet was Love — 
Who did not quit me when Oppression trod 

Upon me ; whom no scandal could remove ; 
Who fought, and fight, in absence, too, my battles, 

Despite the snake Society's loud rattles." 

It was on that occasion that Hobhouse said to Lady Jer- 
sey, " Who would not consent to be attacked in this way, to 
boast such a defense?" To which Lady Jersey might have 
replied, " But who would not be sufficiently rewarded by such 
gratitude, preserved in such a heart and immortalized in such 
verses ?" 

IMPULSES OF LORD BYRON. 

All those who have studied human nature agree that im- 
pulses show the natural qualities of the soul. " Beware of 
your first impulses, they are always true," said a diplomatist, 
the same who insisted that speech was given us to conceal our 
thoughts. If such be the case, Lord Byron's goodness of 
heart is palpable, for all who knew him agree in bearing testi- 
mony to the extraordinary goodness of all his impulses. " His 
lordship," says Parry, " was keenly sensitive at the recital of 
any case of distress, in the first instance ; and advantage be- 
ing taken of this feeling immediately, he would always re- 
lieve it when in his power. If this passion, however, was al- 
lowed to cool, he was no longer to be excited. This was a 
fault of Lord Byron's, as he frequently offered, upon the im- 
pulse of a moment, assistance which he would not afterward 
give, and therefore occasionally compromise his friends." 

To multiply quotations would only be to repeat the same 
proof. I shall therefore merely add that it was often the ne- 
cessity of modifying the nobility of his first impulses which 
made him appear inconstant and changeableo 

EFFECTS OF HAPPINESS AND MISFORTUNE UPON BYRON. 

"The effect of a great success," writes some one, "is ever 
bad in bad natures, but does good only to such as are really 
fifood in themselves." 



Qualities of Lord Byron's Heart, 251 

As the rays of the sun soften the . honey and harden the 
mud, so the rays of happiness soften a good and tender heart, 
while they harden a base and egotistical nature. This proof 
has not been wanting in Byron. His wonderful successes, 
which laid at his feet the homage of nations, and which might 
easily have made him vain and proud, only rendered him bet- 
ter, more amiable, and brighter. 

" I am happy," said Dallas, on the occasion of the great suc- 
cess which greeted the publication of the first canto of " Childe 
Harold," " to think that his triumph, and the attention which 
he has attracted, have already produced upon him the sooth- 
ing effect I had hoped. He was very lively to day." 

Moore says the same ; and Gait is obliged to grant that, 
as Byron became the object of public curiosity ,^ his desire to 
oblige others increased. After giving a personal proof of 
Byron's goodness to him, he ends by saying : — 

" His conversation was tlie^ so lively, that gayety seemed to 
have passed into habit with him." It was also at that time 

that he wrote in his memoranda : — "I love Ward, I love A , 

I love B ," and then, as if afraid of those numerous sym- 
pathies, he adds : " oh ! shall I begin to love the whole woi-ld ?" 
This universal love was only the expression of the want of his 
soul which had mollified under the rays of that mild sun which 
IS called hajDj^iness. 

EFFECTS OF MISFORTUNE AKD IKJUSTICE UPON BYEON. 

If his natural goodness had so large a field to develop it- 
self in happiness, it reached a degree of sublimity in misfor- 
tune. 

That Byron's short life was full of real sorrows, I have 
shown in another chapter, when I had to prove their reality 
against those imputations of their being imaginary made by 
some of his biographers. He required a strength of mind 
equal to his genius and to his sensibility, to be able to re- 
sist the numerous ills with which he was assailed through- 
out his life : — 

" Have I not had to wrestle with my lot ? 
Have I not suffered things to be forgiven? 
Have I not had my brain sear'd, my heart riven, 
Hopes sapp'd, name blighted, Life's life lied away?" 



252 Qualities of Lord Byron's Heart. 

Such beautiful lines speak loudly enough of the intensity 
of his sufferings. Great as they were, they did not, however, 
produce in him any feeling of hatred. To forgive was his 
only I'evenge; and not only did he forgive, but, the paroxysm 
of passion over, there was only room in his soul for those no- 
bler feelings of patience, of toleration, of resignation, and of 
abnegation, of which" no one in London can have formed a 
notion. The storms to which his soul was at times a prey 
only purified it, and discovered a host of qualities Avhich are 
kept back often by the more powerful passions of youth. If 
he never attained that calmness of spirit which is the gift of 
those who can not feel, or perhaps of the saints, he at any rate, 
at the age of thirty-two, began to feel a contempt of all worldly 
and frivolous matters, and came to the resolution of forgiving 
most generously all offenses against him. 

Shelley, who went to see him at Ravenna, wrote to his wife 
"'that if he had mischievous passions he seemed to have sub- 
dued them ; and that he was becoming, what he should be, — 
a virtuous man.'''' 

Mnie. de Bury, in her excellent essay upon Byron, expresses 
herself thus : " Had his natural goodness not been great, the 
events which compelled him to leave his country, and which 
followed upon his departure, must have exercised over his 
mind the effect of drying it up ; and, in lessening its power, 
would have forced him to give full vent to his passions." In- 
stead of producing such a result, they on the contrary purified 
it, and developed in him the germs of a host of virtues. I 
shall not tarry any longer, however, on this subject, as in an- 
other chapter I intend to consider Byron's kindness of dispo- 
sition from a far higher point of view. I shall only add his 
own words, which prove his goodness of character. " I can 
not," said he, " bear malice to any one, nor can I go to sleep 
with an ill thought against any body." 

ABSENCE OF ALL JEALOUS FEELINGS IN LORD BYRON. 

Among the infirmities of human nature, one of the most 
general, serious, and incurable, is certainly that of jealousy. 
Being the essence of a disordered self-love, it presents several 
aspects, according to the different social positions of those 
whom it afflicts, and the degree of goodness of the people. It 



Qualities of Lord Byron's Heart. 26'6 

might, in my mind, almost be called the thermometer of the 
heart. But of all the jealousies, that which has done most 
harm on earth has been the jealousy of artists and of literary 
men. 

This kind of fever has at times risen to a degree incon- 
ceivable. It has raged so high as to call poison to its aid, to 
invoke the help of daggers and create assassins. 

But even putting aside these excesses, proper to Southern 
countries, it is certain that everywhere and at all times jeal- 
ousy has caused numberless cases of ingratitude, and has set 
brothers against brothers, friends against friends, and pupils 
against masters. 

Great minds in France have not been altogetlier free from 
it. Corneille, Racine, Voltaire, became a prey to its disastrous 
influences. In England Dryden, Addison, Swift, Shaftesbury, 
were its victims. So it has been everywhere, and in Italy even 
Petrai'ch, the meek and excellent Petrarch, was not exempted 
from it. 

This moral infirmity is of so subtle a nature, that not only 
does it injure those who are devoted to those works of the 
mind, which can not be said to establish a solid claim to glory 
inasmuch as public opinion is judge, but also those Avhose 
influence being confined to a more limited sphere, should be 
less anxious about obtaining it. It finds so easy an access 
into the souls of men, that it is said that even Plato Was jeal- 
ous of Socrates, Aristotle of Plato, Leibnitz of Locke, and so 
forth. 

When we behold so many great minds at all times unable 
to avoid this jealousy, and that we see nowadays jealousy an- 
imating the pen of some of the best writers, and completely 
changing their moral sense, must we not admire the great 
•goodness of him whom, though living in such a heated atmos- 
phere of jealous rivalry, contrived wholly to escape its effects ? 

This right I claim for Lord Byron, that he was the least 
jealous of any man, as the proofs which I shall bring forward 
will abundantly attest. 

If Byron was jealous of the living, of whom could he have 
been so ? Of course of such who may have become his ri- 
vals in the sphere of literature which he had adopted. When 
Byron appeared in the literary world, those who were most 



254 Qualities of Lord Byron's Heart. 

in repute were Sir Walter Scott, Rogers, Moore, Campbell, 
and the lakers Southey, Wordsworth, Coleridge, and, later, 
Shelley. 

On one occasion, in 1813, Byron amused himself by tracing 
what he called a " triangular gradus ad Parnassum," in which 
the names of the principal poets then in renown are thus class- 
ified : — 



SlE W. SOOTT, 




To know best his feelings with respect to his rivals, we 
must listen to himself; and to preserve the- order given in the 
triangle, let us begin by Walter Scott. We read in Byron'a 
memorandum of the iVth of September, 1813 : — 

" George Ellis and Murray have been talking something 
about Scott and me, George jyro Scoto — and very right too. 
If they want to depose him, I only wish they would not set 
me up as a competitor. Even if I had my choice, I would 
rather be the Earl of Warwick than all the kings he ever 
made ! Jeffrey and Gifford I take to be the monarch-makers 
in poetry and prose. I like Scott — and admire his works to 
what Mr. Braham calls Entusymusy. All such stuff can only 
vex him, and do me no good." 

And elsewhere : " I have not answered W. Scott's last let-- 
ter, but I will. I regret to hear from others that he has late- 
ly been unfoi'tunate in pecuniary involvements. He is un- 
doubtedly the Monarch of Parnassus, and the most English of 
bards." 

When these expressions wei'e written, Byron did not know 
Scott personally ; but notwithstanding his satire, of which he 
had often made a generous retractation, he had always felt a 
great sympathy for Scott, who, on the other hand, appeared to 



Qualities of Lord Byron's Heart. 255 

have forgotten the wound inflicted by Byron's youthful pen, 
only to remember the latter's heartfelt praises, 

A few years after the publication of " English Bards " and 
just after that of " Childe Harold," Byron and Sir W. Scott 
manifested a mutual desire to make each other's acquaintance 
through the medium of Mun-ay, who was then travelling in 
Scotland. An exchange of letters full of mutual generosity 
had taken place, when George IV., then regent, expressed the 
wish to make Byron's acquaintance. 

After^-epeaking to him of " Childe Harold,'' in terms which 
Byron was always proud to recall, the prince went on to speak 
of Walter Scott in the most enthusiastic terms. Byron seem- 
ed almost as pleased iis if the praise had been addressed to 
himself, and hastened to make his illustrious rival acquaint- 
ed with the flattering words used by royalty with regard to 
him. 

It was only in the summer of 1815 that they became per- 
sonally acquainted. Scott was then passing through London 
on his way to France. Their sympathy was mutual. Byron, 
who had been married seven months, already foi-esaw that a 
storm was brewing in his domestic affairs, which explains the 
mysterious melancholy, observed by Scott, upon the counte- 
nance of his young friend. Scott's liveliness, however, always 
brought about a return of Byron's spirits, and their meetings 
were always very gay, " the gayest even," says Scott, " that I 
ever spent." 

Byron's handsomeness produced a great impression upon 
Scott. " It is a beauty," said he, " which causes one to reflect 
and to dream ;" as if he wished one to understand that he 
thought Byron's beauty superhuman. 

" Report had prepared me to meet a man of peculiar hab- 
its and a quick temper, and I had some doubt whether we 
were likely to suit each other in society. I was most agree- 
ably disappointed in this respect. I found Lord Byron in 
the highest degree courteous, and even kind. 

" Like the old heroes in Homer, we exchanged gifts : I gave 
Byron a beautiful dagger mounted with gold, which had been 
the property of the redoubted Elfi Bey. But I was to play 
the part of Diomed in the Iliad, for Byron sent me, some time 
after, a large sepulchral vase of silver. It was full of dead 



256 Qualities of Lord Byron's Heart. 

men's bones, and had inscriptions on the sides of the base. 
One ran thus : — " The bones contained in this urn were found 
in certain ancient sepulchres within the land walls of Athens 
in the month of February, 1811. The other face bears the 
lines of Juvenal — 

'Expende quot libras in duce summo invenies. 
Mors sola fatetur quaiitula hominum corpuscula.' 

" A letter," adds W. Scott, " accompanied this vase, which 
was more valuable to me than the gift itself, from the kind- 
ness with which the donor expressed himself toward me. I 
left it, naturally, in the urn with the bones, but it is now miss- 
ing. As the theft was not of a nature to be practiced by a 
mere domestic, I am compelled to suspect the inhospitulity of 
some individual of higher station, — most gratuitously exer- 
cised certainly, since, after what I have here said, no one will 
probably choose to boast of possessing this literary curiosity." 

Their mutual sympathy increased upon improved acquaint- 
ance with one another. When at Venice Byron was inform- 
ed that Scott was ill, he said that he would not for all the 
world have him ill. "I suppose it is from sympathy that I 
have suffered from fever at the same time." At Ravenna a 
little later, on the 12th of January, 1821, he wrote down in 
his memoranda : — 

Scott is certainly the most wonderful writer of the day. 
His novels are a new literature in themselves, and his poetry 
as good as any, if not better (only on an erroneous system), 
and only ceased to be so popular, because the vulgar learned 
were tired of hearing Aristides called the Just, and Scott the 
Best, and ostracized them. 

" I like him, too, for his manliness of character, for the 
extreme pleasantness of his conversation, and his good-na- 
ture toward myself personally. May he prosper ! for he de- 
serves it. 

" I know no reading to which I fall with such alaciity as 
a work of W. Scott's, I shall give the seal with his bust on 
it to Mile, la Comtesse Guiccioli this evening, who will be cu- 
rious to have the effigies of a man so celebrated." 

He did take the seal to the Countess Guiccioli, and she 
said that Byron's expressions about Scott were always most 



Qualities of Lord Byron's Heart. 257 

affectionate. " How I wish you knew him !" he often re- 
peated. , 

He used to say that it was not the poetry of " Child Har- 
old," but Scott's own superior prose that had done his poetry 
harm, and that if ever the public could by chance get tired of 
his novels, Scott might write in verse with equal success. 
He insisted that Scott had a dramatic talent, " talent," he said, 
" which people are loth to grant me." He said that the suc- 
cess of Scott's novels was not in the least due to the anony- 
mous character he had adopted, and that he could not under- 
stand why he would not sign his name to works of such mei'- 
it. He likewise asserted that of all the authors of his period, 
Scott was the least jealous. " He is too sure of his fame to 
fear any rivals, nor does he think of good works as Tuscans do 
of fever ; that thei"e is only a certain amount of it in the world, 
and that in communicating it to others, one gets rid of it.** 

" I never travel without taking Scott's novels with me," 
said Byron to Medwin, at Pisa ; " it is a real library, a literary 
treasure ; I can read them yearly with renewed pleasure." 

A few days before his departure for Greece, he learned 
that M. Stendhall had published an article upon Racine and 
Shakspeare, wherein there were some unfavorable remarks 
about Walter Scott. 

Notwithstanding his occupations preparatory to depart- 
ure, he found time to write to Stendhall, and tell him how 
much he felt the injustice of these remarks, and to request 
that they should be rectified. 

This letter of Byron's to M. Beyle will no doubt be read 
with universal admiration, as it points out most prominently 
all the goodness of his character : — 

" Sir, — Now that I know to Avhora I am indebted for a 
very flattering mention in the ' Rome, Naples, and Florence, 
in 1817,' by Monsieur Stendhall, it is fit that I should I'eturn 
my thanks (however undesired or undesirable) to Monsieur 
Beyle, with whom I had the honor of being acquainted at 
Milan in 1816.* You only did me too miich honor in what 
you were pleased to say in that work, but it has hardly given 

* Why has the passage in the first edition of Stendhall's works, which treats 
in enthusiastic terms of B^Ton's genius, lieen cut out of the subsequent editions ? 



258 Qualities of Lord Byron's Heart. 

me less pleasure than the praise itself, to become at length 
aware (which I have done by mere accident) th^t I am indebt- 
ed for it to one of whose good opinion I was really ambitious. 
So many changes have taken place since that period in the 
Milan circle, that I hardly dare recur to it — some dead, some 
banished, and some in the Austrian dungeons. Poor Pelico ! 
I trust that in his iron solitude his muse is consoling him in 
some measure, one day to delight us again, when both she and 
her poet are restored to freedom. 

" There is one part of your observations in the pamphlet, 
which I shall venture to remark upon : it regards "Walter 
Scott. You say that ' his character is little worthy of enthu- 
siasm, at the same time that you mention his productions in the 
manner they deserve. I have known Walter Scott long and 
well, and in occasional situations which call forth the real char- 
acter, and I can assure you that his character is worthy of ad- 
miration ; that of all men, he is the most open, the most hon- 
orable, the most amiable," etc. Byron." 

Even at Missolonghi, whei'e certainly literary thoughts were 
little in harmony with his occupations, Byron found occasion 
to speak of his sentiments as regards Scott, since even the 
simple and anti-poetic Parry tells us, in his interesting narra- 
tive of " Tlie Last Days of Lord Byron," of the admiration 
and affection with which Byron always spoke of Walter Scott. 
" He never wearied of his praise of ' Waverley,' and continu- 
ally quoted passages from it." 

May we be allowed to observe, in conclusion, that such a 
generous desire on the part of Byron constantly to put for- 
ward the merits of Scott deserved from the latter a warmer 
acknowledgment. The homage paid to his memory by Scott 
came late, and is cold. Be it from a Tory or Protestant spirit, 
Scott in his eulogy of Lord Byron did not disclaim openly the 
calumnies uttered against the great poet's fame, but almost 
sided with his hypocritical apologists, by assuming a kind of 
tone of indulgence in speaking of him. 

ROGERS. 

Rogers comes next in the triangular order. 

Byron's esteem for Rogers was such, that not only did he 



Qualities of Lord Byron's Heart. 259 

spare hira in his famous satire, but even addressed him a real 
compliment in the lines : — 

"And thou, melodious Rogers! rise at last, 
Recall the pleasing memory of the past; 
Arise ! let blest remembrance still inspire, 
And strike to wonted tones thy halluw'd lyre; 
Restore Apollo to his vacant throne. 
Assert th}'^ countr)''s konor and thine own." 

He equally declared that, after the " Essay on Man" of Pope, 
the " Pleasures of Memory " constituted the finest English di- 
dactic poem. This opinion he maintained always. 

" I have read again the ' Pleasures of Memory,' " he wrote 
in September, 1813. "The elegance of this poem is quite 
marvellous. Not a vulgar line throughout the whole book." 

About the same time he read, in the " Edinburgh Review," 
a eulogy of ]^ogers. " He is placed very high," he exclaimed, 
" but not higher than he has a right to be. There is a sum- 
mary review of every body. Moore and I included : we were 
both — ^he justly — praised ; but both very justly ranked under 
Rogers. 

At another time he wrote in his memoranda : 

*' When he does talk (Rogers), on all subjects of taste, his 
delicacy of expression is as pure as his poetry. If you enter 
his house, his drawing-room, his library, you involuntarily say, 
' This is not the dwelling of a common mind.' There is not a 
gem, a coin, a book, thrown aside on his chimney-piece, his 
sofa, his table, that does not bespeak an almost fastidious ele- 
gance in the possessor. But this very delicacy must be tlie 
misery of his existence. Oh ! the jarrings this disposition 
must have encountered through life !" 

On one occasion he borrows one of Rogers's ideas, to 
write upon it the " Bride of Abydos ;" and in confessing that 
the " Pleasures of Memory " have suggested his theme, he 
adds in a note, that " it is useless to say that the idea is taken 
from a poem so well known, and to which one has such pleas- 
urable recourse." 

To Rogers he dedicates the " Giaour," a slight but sincere 
token of admiration. 

When Rogers sent him " Jacqueline," Byron rej^lied that 
he could not receive a more acceptable gift. " It is grace. 



260 Qualities of Lokd By'ron's Heart. 

delicacy, poetry itself." "What astonishes him is that Rogers 
should not be tempted to write oftener such charming poetry. 
He sympathized with that kind of soft affection, though he 
would say that he lacked the talent to express it. 

From Venice he wrote to Moore, " I hope Rogers is flour- 
ishing. He is the Titan of j^oetry, already immortal. You 
and I must wait to become so." 

At Pisa he took the part of Rogers against his detractors 
in the warmest manner. Not only did the " Pleasures of 
Memory " always enchant him, not only did he insist that the 
work Avas immortal, but added that Rogers was kind and good 
to him. And as people persisted in blaming Rogers for be- 
ing jealous and susceptible, which Byron knew from experi- 
ence to be so, he replied, that " these things are, as Lord 
Kenyon said of Erskine, little spots in the sun. Rogers has 
qualities which outweigh the little weaknesses of his char- 
acter." 

MOORE. 

Moore is third in the order of the triangle. We have seen 
Byron's sentiments and conduct with regard to this frieud. 
It remains for us to note the feelings of the author for anoth- 
er very popular writer, who was in many respects a Avorthy 
rival. 

Byron had often recommended Moore- to-write other poet- 
ry than melodies, and to apply his talent to a work of more 
serious importance. When he learned that he was writing 
an Oriental poem he was charmed. 

" It may be, and would appear to a third person," he wrote 
to him, " an incredible thing ; but I know you will believe 
me, when I say that I am as anxious for your success as one 
human being can be for another's — as much as if I had never 
scribbled a line. Surely the field of fame is wide enough for 
all ; and if it were not, I would not willingly rob my neighbor 
of a rood of it." 

And he goes on to praise Moore and to depreciate him- 
self, as was his custom. 

After two years' intimacy he dedicated the " Corsair " to 
Moore, and, in speaking of it to him, he adds : — 

" If I can but testify to you and the world how truly T ad- 
mire and esteem you, I shall be quite satisfied." 



Qualities of Lord Byron's Heart. 261 

And, in dedicating his work to him, he expresses himself 
thus : — 

"My praise could add nothing to your well-earned and 
firmly-established fame, and with my most hearty admiration 
of your talents, and delight in your conversation, yoii are al- 
ready acquainted." 

I have already said that he almost wished to be eclipsed, 
that Moore might shine the more prominently. 

" The best way to make the public 'forget' me is to re- 
mind them of yourself. You can not suppose that I would 
ask you or advise you to publish, if I thought you would fail. 
I really have no literary envy ; and I do not believe a friend's 
success ever sat nearer another's heart, than yours does to the 
wishes of mine. It is for elderly gentlemen to ' bear no 
brother near,' and can not become our disease for more years 
than we may perhaps number. I wish you to be out before 
Eastern subjects are again before the public." 

He meanwhile got Murray to use his influence to point out 
to Moore the best time for appearing. 

" 1 need not say, that I have his success much at heart ; 
not»only because he is my friend, but something much better 
— a man of great talent, of which he is less sensible than, I 
believe, any even of his enemies. If you can so far oblige me 
as to step down, do so," etc. 

Lord Byron had never ceased to press Moore to publish 
his poem. When it appeared, he wrote to him from Ven- 
ice : — 

" I am glad that we are to have it at last. Really and 
truly, I want you to make a great hit, if only out of self-love, 
because we happen to be old cronies ; and I have no doubt 
you will — I am sure you can. But you are, I'll be sworn, in a 
devil of a pucker, and I am not at your elbow, and Rogers is. 
I envy him ; which is not fair, because he does not envy any 
body.* Mind you send to me — that is, make Murray send — 
the moment you are forth." 

" I feel as anxious for Moore as I could do for myself, for 
the soul of me ; and I would not have him succeed otherwise 
than splendidly, which I trust he will do." 

* Was this a little irony ? 1 think so, for it was believed that jealous}^ was 
the weak point of Rogers. 



262 Qualities of Lord Byron's Heart. 

And then, Avriting again to Murray, from Venice (June, 
181V) :— 

" It gives me great pleasure to hear of Moore's success, 
and the more so that I never doubted that it would be com- 
plete. Whatever good you can tell me of him and his poem 
will be most acceptable ; I feel very anxious indeed to receive 
it. I hope that he is as happy in his fame and reward as I 
wish him to be ; for I know no one who deserves both more, 
if any so much." 

A month later he added : — 

" I have got the sketch and extracts from ' Lalla Rookh ' — 
which I humbly suspect will knock up , . . ." (he intended 
himself), " and show young gentlemen that something more 
than having been across a camel's hump is necessary to write 
a good Oriental tale. The plan, as well as the extracts I have 
seen, please me very much indeed, and I feel impatient for 
the whole." 

And, lastly, after he had received it : — 

" I have read ' Lalla Rookh.' .... I am very glad to hear 
of his popularity, for Moore is a very noble fellow, in all re- 
spects, and will enjoy it without any of the bad feelings which 
success, good or evil, sometimes engenders in the men of 
rhyme." 

He wrote to Moore from Ravenna, in a sort of jest, — " I 
am not quite sure that I shall allow the Miss Byrons to read 
' Lalla Rookh,' — in the first place, on account of this sad pas- 
sion, and in the second, that they mayn't discover that there 
was a better poet than Papa."* 

To end these quotations, let us add that, shortly before his 
death, he said to Medwin : — " Moore is one of the small num- 
ber of writers, who will survive the century which has appre- 
ciated his worth. The Irish Melodies will go to posterity 
with their music, and the poems and the music will last as 
long as Ireland, or music or poetry." 

CAMPBELL. 

Campbell, the author of "Pleasures of Hope," and who 
stands fourth in the triangle, was spared, with Rogers, in the 
famous satire — 

* Moore, Letter 435. 



Qualities of Lord Byron's Heart. 263 

" Come forth, oh ! Campbell, give thy talents scope : 
Who dare aspire, if thou must cease to hope?" 

This homage was strengthened by a note, in which Byron 
called the " Pleasures of Hope " " one of the finest didactic 
poems in the English language. 

Byron's relations with Campbell were never as intimate as 
with other poets. Not only because circumstances prevented 
it, but also in consequence of a fault in Campbell's character, 
which lessened the sympathy raised by the admiration of his 
talent and of his worth. This fault consisted in an excessive 
opinion of himself, which prevented his being just toward his 
rivals, and bearing patiently with their successes, or the criti- 
cisms of his own work. 

Coleridge at this time was giving lectures upon poetry, in 
which he taught a new system of poetry. 

" He attacks," says Lord Byron, " the ' Pleasures of Hope,' 
and all other pleasure whatever, . . . Campbell will be des- 
perately annoyed. I never saw a man. (and of him I have 
seen very little) so sensitive. What a happy temperament ! 
I am sorry for it ; what can he fear from criticism ?" 

Lord Byron had just j^ubhshed the "Bride of Abydos," 
when he wrote in his journal, " Campbell last night seemed a 
little nettled at something or other — I know not what. We 

were standing in the ante-saloon, when Lord H brought 

out of the other room a vessel of some composition similar to 
that which is used in Catholic churches for burning incense, 
and seeing us, he exclaimed, ' Here is some incense for you.' 
Campbell answered, ' Carry it to Lord Byron ; he is used to 
it.' 

" Now this comes of ' bearing no brother near the throne.' 
I who have no throne am at perfect peace with all the poetic- 
al fraternity." 

But if this weakness of Campbell lessened Byron's sympa- 
thy for him, or rather interfered with his intimacy, it never 
altered his just appreciation of his merits, or made him less 
generous to him. 

" By-the-by," writes Byron to Moore, " Campbell h'as a 
printed poem which is not yet published, the scene of which 
is laid in Germany. It is perfectly magnificent, and equal to 
himself. I wonder why he does not publish it." 



264 Qualities of Lord Byron's Heart. 

Later on, in Italy, when in his reply to Blackwood, Byron 
criticises modern poetry, and gives, without sparing any body, 
not even himself, his unbiased opinion about the poets of the 
day, he says : " We are all on a false track, except Rogers, 
Campbell, and Crabbe." 

And in his memoranda in 1821, at Ravenna, we find the 
following passage : — 

"Read Campbell's 'Poets' .... justly celebrated. His 
defense of Pope is glorious. To be sure, it is his own cause 
too — but no matter, it is very good, and does him great cred- 
it ... If any thing could add to my esteem of this gentleman 
poet, it would be his classical defense of Pope against the cant 
of the present day." 

On the fifth line of the triangle come the names of Southey, 
Wordsvv^orth, and Coleridge, commonly called the " Lakers," 
because they had resided near the Lakes of Cumberland and 
Westmoreland. He was certainly bitter against these in his 
satire ; but owing simply to their efforts to upset the school 
of Pope, of which he had made a deep study, and to their en- 
deavors to start an sesthetical school, which he strenuously 
opposed. As, however, in blaming, he allowed his passion at 
times to master his opinions and judgments of their merits, 
he generously made amends and o%vned his error some years 
later. He kept to his own notions of poetry and art, but nobly 
recognized the talent of the Lakers, knowing, however, very 
well that he would never obtain from them a reciiDrocity of 
good feeling. 

SOUTHEY. 

" Yesterday, at Holland House, I was introduced to South- 
ey, — the best-looking bard I have seen for some time. To 
have that poet's head and shoulders, I would almost have writ- 
ten his ' Sapphics.' He is certainly a prepossessing person to 
look on, and a man of talent, and all that — and — there is his 
eulogy." 

" Southey I have not seen much of. His appearance is 
epic ; and he is the only existing entire man of letters. His 
manners are mild, but not those of a man of the world, and 
his talents of the first order. His prose is perfect. Of his 
poetry there are various opinions : there is, pei-haps, too much 



Qualities of Lokd Byron's Heart. 205 

of it for the present generation — posterity will probably se- 
•lect. He has passages equal to any thing. At present^he has 
a party, but no public — except for his prose writings. The 
* Life of Nelson ' is beautiful." 

WORDSWORTH. 

Underneath some lines of his satire upon Wordsworth, By- 
ron in 1816 wrote in Switzerland the word "unjust !" 

He often praised Wordsworth, even at times when the lat- 
ter had, for reasons which I will mention hereafter, lost all 
claims to Byron's indulgence. Even in his poem of the 
" Island," written shortly before his departure for Greece, 
where he was to die, Byron found means of inserting a pas- 
sage from Wordsworth's 23oem, which he considered exquisite. 

COLERIDGE. 

Among the three Lakers, Coleridge was the one to whom 
he showed the most generous feeling. He was poor, and 
lived by his pen. Lord Byron, putting this consideration 
above all others, wished to assist at his readings, and praised 
them warmly. Coleridge having asked him on one occasion 
to interest himself with the director of Drury-lane Theatre (on 
the committee of which Byron then stood) the latter did his 
best to gratify the wishes of Coleridge, and wrote him the most 
flattering letter, blaming the satire which had been the effect 
of a youthful ebullition of feeling : — 

"P. S. — You mention my 'satire,' lampoon, or whatever you 
or others please to call it. I can only say that it was written 
when I was very young and very angry, and has been a thorn 
in my side ever since ; more particularly as almost all the per- 
sons animadverted upon became subsequently my acquaint- 
ances, and some of them my friends, which is ' heaping fire 
upon an enemy's head,' and forgiving me too readily to per- 
mit me to forgive myself. The pai-t applied to you is pert, 
and petulant, and shallow enough ; but, although I have long 
done every thing in my power to suppress the circulation 
of the whole thing, I shall always regret the wantonness or 
generality of many of its attacks. H Coleridge writes his 
promised tragedy, Drury Lane will be set up." Though har- 
assed with pecuniary difficulties of all kinds, Bvron contrived 

M 



266 Qualities of Lord Byron's Heart. 

to help Coleridge, who he had heard was in the greatest dis- 
tress. 

He wrote to Moore : — " By the way, if poor Coleridge — who 
is a man of wonderful talent, and in distress, and about to 
publish two volumes of poesy and biography, and who has 
been worse used by the critics than ever we were — will you, 
if he comes out, promise me to review him favorably in the 
E. R. ? Praise him I think you must ; but will you also praise 
him well, — of all things the most difficult ? It will be the mak- 
ing of him. 

" This must be a secret between you and me, as Jeffrey 
might not like such a project: nor, indeed, might he himself 
like it. But I do think he only wants a pioneer and a spark 
or two to explode most gloriously." 

He sent Murray a MS. tragedy of Coleridge, begging him to 
read it and to publish it : — 

" When you have been enabled to form an opinion on Mr. 
Coleridge's MS., you will oblige me by returning it, as, in fact, 
I have no authority to let it out of my hands. I think most 
highly of it, and feel anxious that you should be the publisher ; 
but if you are not, I do not despair of finding those who will." 

As the reader knows, Byron, while in England, always gave 
away the produce of his poems. To Coleridge he destined 
part of the sum offered to him by Murray for"" Parisina " and 
the Siege of Corinth." Some difficulty, however, having 
arisen, because Murray refused to jjay the 100 guineas to any 
other than Byron himself, he borrowed it himself to give it to 
Coleridge. • 

At the same time Byron paid so noble a tribute to Cole- 
ridge's talent, and to his poem of " Christabel," by inserting a 
note on the subject in his preface to the " Siege of Corinth," 
that Coleridge's editor took this note as the epigraph. 

" Christabel ! — I won't have any one," he said, " sneer at 
* Christabel ;' it is a fine wild poem." 

In 1816 he wi'ote from Venice to Moore: — 

" I hear that the E. R. has cut up Coleridge's ' Christabel,' 
and declared against me for praising it. I praised it, firstly, 
because I thought well of it ; secondly, because Coleridge Avas 
in great distress, and after doing Avhat little I could for him 
in essentials,! thought that the public avowal of my good 



Qualities of Lord Byron's Heart. 267 

opinion might help him further, at least with the bookselleBS. 
I am very sorry that J has attacked him, because, poor fel- 
low, it will hurt him in mind and pocket. As for me, he's 
welcome — I shall never think less of Jeffrey for any thing he 
may say against me or mine in future." 

At Genoa he declared, in a memorandum, that Crabbe and 
Coleridge were pre-eminent in point of power and talent. 

At Pisa he blamed those who refused to see in " Christa- 
bel " a work ol rare merit, notwithstanding the knowledge 
which he had of Coleridge's ingratitude to him ; and refused 
to believe that W. Scott did not admire the poem, " for we all 
owe Coleridge a great deal," said he, " and even Scott himself," 

And Medwin adds : " Lord Byron thinks Coleridge's poem 
very fine. He paraphrased and imitated one passage. He 
considers the idea excellent, and enters into it." 

And sj)eaking of Coleridge's psychological poem, he said : 
" What perfect harmony ! ' Kubla Khau ' delights me." 

SHELLEY. 

If Shelley did not find a place in the triangle, it is only be- 
cause he was not yet known, except by the eccentricities of 
his conduct as a boy. But so soon as Byron was able to ap- 
preciate his genius, he lavished praises upon the poet and the 
man, while he blamed his metaphysics. 

In all his letters we find proofs of his affectionate regard 
for Shelley ; and during his last days in Greece, he said to 
Finlay, — " Shelley was really a most extraordinary genius ; but 
those who know him only from his works, know but half his 
merits : it was from his thoughts and his conversation poor 
Shelley ought to be judged. He was romance itself in his 
manners and his style of thinking." 

" You were all mistaken," he wrote from Pisa to Murray, 
" about Shelley, who was, without exception, the best and least 
selfish man I ever knew." 

And w^hen he learned his death, he wrote to Moore : — 
" There is thus another man gone, about whom the world was 
ill-naturedly, and ignorantly, and brutally mistaken. It will, 
perhaps, do him justice now, when he can be no better for it." 

Such were Byi-on's expressions in behalf of poets of whose 
school he disapproved, before the calumnies spread about, and 



268 Qualities of Lord Byron's Heart. 

tbe perfidious provocations of some, joined to the ingratitude 
and jealousy of others, obliged him to turn his generosity into 
bitter retaliation. We will speak elsewhere of this epoch in 
their mutual relations, and we hope to show, if jealousy caused 
the change, that it sprang from them and not from him. 

To praise was almost a besetting sin in Lord Byron. So 
amiable a fault was not only committed in favor of his rivals, 
but also by way of encouragement to young authors. What 
did he not do to promote the success of M. N. N , the au- 
thor of Bertram's dramas, whom Walter Scott had recom- 
mended to him ? 

After reading a tragedy which a young man had submit- 
ted to him, Byron wrote in his memoranda : — 

" This young man has talent ; he has, no doubt, stolen his 
ideas from another, but I shall not betray him. His critics 
will be but to6 prone to proclaim it. I hate to discourage a 
beginner." 

Indulgent to mediocrity, compassionate with the weakness 
and defects of all, incapable of causing the slightest pain to 
those who were destitute of talent, even when art required 
that he should condemn them, his goodness was such, that he 
almost felt remorse whenever he had been led to criticise a 
work too severely. He deplored his having dealt too harsh- 
ly with poor Blackett, as soon as the latter's position became 
known to him ; and also with Keats, whose talent, though 
great, was raw in many respects, and who had become a fol- 
lower of the Lakist school, which Byron abhorred. 

To praise the humble, however, in order to humble the 
great, was an action incompatible witli his noble character. 
Great minds constituted his great attractions, and on these he 
bestowed such praise as could not be deemed too partial or 
unjust. 

Happy in the unqualified praise of Pope, of the classical 
poets, of the great German and Italian poets, he sometimes 
made exceptions, and Shakspeare was one. This is not to be 
wondered ato Lord Byron's mind was as well regulated as it 
was powerful. His admiration of Pope proves it. 

"As to Pope," he writes to Moore from Ravenna, in 1821, 
" I have always regarded him as the greatest name in our Po- 
etry. Depend upon it, the rest are barbarians. He is a Greek 



Qualities of Lord Byron's Heart. 269 

temple, with a Gothic cathedral on one hand, and a Turkish 
mosque and all sorts of fantastic pagodas and conventicles 
about him. You may call Shakspeare and Milton pyramids, 
if you please ; but I prefer the Temple of Theseus, or the 
Parthenon, to a mountain of burnt brick-work."* 

Order and proportion were necessities of his nature, so 
much so that he condemned his writings whenever they de- 
parted from his ideal of the beautiful, the essential constitu- 
ents of which were order and power. 

His admiration, therefore, was entirely centred in classical 
works. But has not Shakspeare a little disregarded the eter- 
nal laws of the beautiful observed by Homer, Pindar, and a 
host of other poets, ancient and modern ? 

If Byron, then, did not see in Shakspeare all that perfection 
which an ^sthetical school just sprung from the North attrib- 
uted to him, was he to be blamed ? Has he, on this account, 
disregarded the great merits of that glorious mind ? Even 
had Byron seen in Shakspeare the founder of a dramatic 
school, rather than a genius more powerful than orderly, who 
acted against his will upon certain principles, and who scru- 
tinized the human heart to an almost supernatural depth, waS 
he interdicted from finding fault with that school ? 

Does Shakspeare so economize both time and mind, as to 
make the action of his dramas continuous, without fatiguing 
the mind or weakening the dramatic effect? Are not the 
unities and the proportions disregarded in his plays ? What 
necessity is there at times to put one piece into another ? Are 
not his discussions and monologues too long ? Does not his 
own exuberant genius become a fatigue to himself and to his 
readers ? Are not, perhaps, his characters too real ? and do 
they not often degenerate, without motive, from the sublime 
into the ridiculous ? Would Hamlet have appeared less inter- 
esting or less mad had he not spoken indelicate and cruel 
words to Ophelia ? Would Laertes have seemed less grieved 
on hearing of the death of his sister had he not made so un- 
necessary a play on the words ? 

Was not Byron, therefore, right when he said, with Pope, 
that Shakspeare was " the worst of models ?" And could he 

* Moore, Letter 422. 



270 Qualities of Lord Byron's Heart. 

possibly be called jealous, because he added that, " notwith- 
standing his defects, Shakspeare was still the most extraordi- 
nary of men of genius ?'' 

This opinion of Byron was decidedly serious, though his 
opinions did not always partake of that character. His hu- 
mor was rather French : he liked to laugh, to joke, to mysti- 
fy, and astonish people who wished to understand him. He 
used, then, to employ a particular measure in his praise and 
his condemnation. 

" On one occasion at Missolonghi, and shortly before his 
deafh," says Colonel Stanhope, " the drama was mentioned in 
conversation, and Byron at once attacked Shakspeare by de- 
fending the unities. A gentleman present, on hearing his anti- 
Sluikspearean opinions rushed out of the room, and afterward 
entered his protest most earnestly against such doctrines. 
Lord Byron was quite delighted with this, and redoubled the 
severity of his criticism. 

" He said once, when we were alone, — ' I like to astonish 
Englishmen ; they come abroad full of Shakspeare, and con- 
tempt for the dramatic literature of other nations. They 
think it blasphemy to find a fault in his writings, which are 
full of them. Peo]ile talk of my writings, and yet read the 
sonnets to Master Hughes.' 

"And yet," continues Finlay, " he continually had the most 
melodious lines of Shakspeare in his mouth, as examples* of 
blank verse." 

The jealousy of Shakspeare attributed to Byron is, however, 
nothing when compared to the ridiculous assertion, that he 
was jealous of Keats, simply because he had repeated in joke 
what the papers and Shelley himself, a friend of Keats, had 
said, namely, " th.at the young poet had been killed by a criti- 
cism of the ' Quarterly.' " 

But since a French critic, M. Philarete Chasles, has made 
the same accusation, we -must pause and consider it. 

At the time when Byron was more than ever penetrated 
with the perfection of Pope, and opposed to the romantic 
school, — at the time when he himself wrote his dramas accord- 
ing to all classical rules, — he received at Ravenna the poems 
of a young disciple of the Lakists, who united in himself all 
their exaggerated faults. This young man had the audacity — 



Qualities of Lord Byron's Heart. 271 

(which was almost unpardonable in the eyes of Byron) — to 
despise Pope, and to constitute liimself at nineteen a lawgiver 
of poetical rules in England. 

Such ridiculous pride, added to the contempt shown to his 
idol, incensed Byron and prevented his showing Keats the 
same indulgence he had shown Maturin and Blackett. He 
spoke severely of Keats in his famous reply to " Blackwood's 
Magazine," and to his Cambridge friends — followers of the 
good old traditions. He quoted some lines of Keats, and re- 
marked that " they were taken from the book of a young man 
who was learning how to write in verse, but who began by 
teaching others the art of poetry." Then, after a long quota- 
tion, he adds — " What precedes will show the ideas and prin- 
ciples professed by the regenerators of the English lyre in re- 
gard to the man who most of any contributed to its harmony, 
and the progress visible in their innovation." 

Let us not forget to add that he styled Keats " the tadpole 
of the Lakists." 

But the following year, when he heard that Keats had died 
at Rome, the victim of his inordinate self-love, and unable to 
be consoled for the criticism directed against his poetry, he 
wrote the following heartfelt, and, as it were, repentant words 
to Shelley: — 

" I am very sorry to hear what you say of Keats — is it 
actually true ? 1 did not think criticism had been so killing. 
Though I differ from you essentially in your estimate of his 
performances, I so much abhor all unnecessary pain, that I 
would rather he had been seated on the highest peak of Par- 
nassus than have perished in such a manner. Poor fellow ! 
though, with such inordinate self-love, he would probably have 

not .been very happy Had I known that Keats was 

dead, or that he was ' alive,' and so ' sensitive,' I should have 
omitted some remarks upon his poetry, to which I was pro- 
voked by his attack upon Pope, and my disapprobation of his 
own style of writing." 

To Murray he wrote the same day : — 

" Is it true what Shelley writes me, that poor John Keats 
died at Rome of the ' Quarterly Review ?' I am very sorry 
for it ; though I think he took the wrong line as a poet, and 
was spoilt by Cockneyfying and suburbing, and versifying 



272 Qualities of Lord Byron's Heart. 

Tooke's 'Pantheon' and Lempriere's 'Dictionary.' I know 
by experience, that a savage review is hemlock to a sucking 
author ; and the one on me (which produced the ' EngUsh 
Bards,' etc.) knocked me down ; but I got up again. Instead 
of bursting a-bloodvessel, I drank three bottles of claret, and 
began an answer, finding that there was nothing in the article 
for which I could lawfully knock Jeffrey on the head, in an 
honorable way. However, I would not be the person who 
wrote the homicidal article for all the honor and glory in the 
world, though I by no means approve of that school of scrib- 
bling which it treats upon." 

Some time after he wrote again to Murray, saying, — 
" You know very well that I did not approve of Keats's poet- 
ry, nor of his poetical principles, nor of his abuse of Pope. 
But he is dead. I beg that you will therefore omit all I have 
said of him either in my manuscripts or in my publications. 
His ' Hyperion ' is a fine monument, and will cause his name 
to last. I do not envy the man who wrote the article against 
Keats." 

Several months later he made complete amends. He add- 
ed to his severe article in answer to Blackwood, a note in the 
following terms : 

" I have read the article before and since; and although it 
is bitter, I do not think that a man should permit himself to 
be killed by it. But a young man little dreams what he must 
inevitably encounter in the course of a life ambitious of pub- 
lic notice. My indignation at Mr. Keats's depreciation of 
Pope has hardly permitted me do justice to his own genius, 
which, nialgre all the fantastic fopperies of his style, was un- 
doubtedly of great promise. His fragment of ' Hyperion ' 
seems actually inspired by the Titans, and is as sublime as 
-^schylus. He is a loss to our literature; and the more so, 
as he himself, before his death, is said to have been persuaded 
that he had not taken the right line, and was reforming his 
style upon the more classical models of the language." 

Were we wrong in saying that the accusations against By- 
ron, with respect to Keats, did not deserve a notice ? If we 
have noticed them, it has been merely to show, that the 
French critic should have judged matters in this instance 
with greater conscientiousness and reflection. 



Qualities of Lord Byron's Heart. 27B 

Influenced as Byron always was by his own ideas of beau- 
ty, be required in the authors themselves certain moral quali- 
ties which would demand for their works the bestowal of his 
praise. It was not only their talent, but their loyalty, their 
independence of character, their political consistency, and 
their perfect honesty, which endeared Walter Scott, Moore, 
and others, to him. 

Byron, on the other hand, had never found these qualities 
in the Lakists,.and especially in the head of their school, 
whose whole life, on the contrary, bore the marks of quite 
opposite chai-acteristics. Since Southey's dream of a life of 
intimacy with other poets of his school, such as Wordsworth 
and Coleridge, in some blissful remote spot from which they 
would publish their works in common, and where they would 
live with their wives and children in community of interests, 
some change had taken place ; for Southey had so far deviated 
from his purpose as to become Laureate, to write for himself, 
and to profess ultra-Tory principles, the ultimate objects of 
which could not but be palpable. 

All this called for Byron's contempt. To this contempt, 
however, he gave no expression, for fear of wounding without 
reason, until that reason did arise by the Laureate's unforgiv- 
ing spirit. " The Laureate," says Byron, " is not one of those 
who- can forgive." Incapable of forgetting that Byron's gen- 
ius had obscured his own reputation, Southey hated Byron 
with an intensity, such as to make him look out for oppor- 
tunities of doing him an injury. This opportunity Southey 
found in Byron's departure for the Continent, subsequently 
to the unfortunate I'esult of his marriage ; and not only did 
he join in all the calumnies which were set forth against him 
in England, but actually followed him to Switzerland, there 
to invent new ones, in the hope of crushing his reputation 
and ruini^jg the fame of the poet by the depreciation of the 
man. 

Lord Byron for some time was ignorant of the Laureate's 
baseness, for oftentimes friends deem it pi'udent to hide the 
truth which it would perhaps be better to make known. But 
when he came to know of them, his whole soul revolted, as 
naturally must be the case with a man of honor, and in " Don 
Juan " he came down upon Southey with a double-edged sword, 

M2 



27-i Qualities of Lord Byron's Heart, 

throwing ridicule upon the author's writings, and odium upon 
his conduct as a calumniator. 

This revenge was well deserved. It was not only natural 
but just, and even necessary, for it was requisite to show up 
the man, to judge of the value to be attached to his calum- 
nies ; and later, when he called him out, he did what honor re- 
quired of him. 

We have seen elsewhere how far the Laureate's conduct 
justified Byron's retaliation. It is enough, therefore, that I 
should have shown here that Byron's anger was rather the re- 
sult of Southey's envy than his own, and that his sarcasms 
were due entirely to the disgust which he felt for such dishon- 
orable proceedings. 

From that time his language, when speaking of Words- 
worth and Coleridge, always reflected the same disgust. Both 
had made themselves the echoes of Southey, and both had 
been inconstant from interested motives, and had solicited 
favors from the party in power, which they had abused in 
their writings. " They have each a price," said Byron at 
Pisa. 

On one occasion, as Shelley and Medwin were laughing at 
some of Wordsworth's last poems, Avhich disgusted them, not 
only from the subservient spirit to Toryism which pervaded 
them, but also excited their laughter from their absurdity, By- 
ron, in whose house they were, said to them, " It is satisfac- 
tory to see that a man who becomes mercenary, and traffics 
upon the independence of his character, loses at the same time 
his talent as a poet." 

Byi-on had such a notion of political consistency, that he 
ceased having any regard for those who failed in this re- 
spect. 

" I was at dinner," says Stendhall, " at the Marquis of Bre- 
no's at Milan, in 1816, with Byron and the celebrated poet 
Monti, the author of ' Basvilliana.' The conversation fell upon 
poetry, and the question was asked which were the twelve 
most beautiful lines written in a century, either in English, in 
Italian, or in French. The Italians jjresent agreed in declar- 
ing that Monti's first twelve lines in the ' Mascheroniana' were 
the finest Italian lines written for a century. Monti recited 
them. I observed Byron, He was in raptures. That kind 



Qualities of Lord Byron's Heart. 275 

of haughty look which a man often puts on when he has to 
o-et rid of an inopportune question, and which rather took 
away from the beauty of his magnificent countenance, sudden- 
ly disappeared to make way for an expression of happiness. 
The whole of the first canto to the ' Mascheroniana,' which 
Conti was made to recite, enchanted all hearers, and caused 
the liveliest pleasure to the author of ' Childe Harold.' Nev- 
er shall I forget the sublime expression of his countenance : it 
was the peaceful look of power united with genius." 

He learned, later, that Monti was a man inconsistent in his 
politics, and that on the sole impulse of his passions he had 
passed from one party to another, and had called from the 
pen of another poet the remark that he justified Dante's say- 
ing,— 

" II verso si non 1' aniino costante." 

Byi'on's sympathy for Monti ceased from that time, and he 
even called him the " Giuda del Parnaso," whereas his esteem 
and sympathy for Silvio Pellico, for Manzoni, and for many 
other Italians, remained perfectly unshaken. 

His sense of justice extended to all nationalities. He was 
a cosmopolite, and, provided the elements essential to claim 
his admiration existed both in the man's work, and in his 
character, no personal consideration ever came in the way of 
his bestowing praise, — the most pleasing duty that could be- 
fall him. The great minds of antiquity, those of the middle 
ages — especially the Italians, — all the modern great men, of 
whatever nation, were all for him of one country, the country 
of great intellects, and the degree of his sympathy for each 
was calculated upon the degree of their merit. 

We know how ably he defended Dante, the greatest of 
Italian poets ; how ably he translated " Francesca da Rimini," 
and how he exposed the error of those who did not find that 
Dante was not sufficiently pathetic. 

We know his admiration for Goethe, who was not only his 
contemporary, but also his rival. Could Goethe see with pleas- 
iire another star rise in the horizon, when his own was at its 
zenith ? Some say that he could. Without sharing altogeth- 
er in this opinion, it is impossible, however, not to find that 
the first impressions which he gave to the Avorld with respect 



276 Qualities of Lord Byron's Heart, 

to Byron do not justify the accusations of those Avho said he 
was jealous of him. 

While at Ravenna, Byron received several numbers of a 
German paper edited and written by Goethe, It contained 
several articles upon English literature, and, among others, 
upon "Manfred," Curious to know what the patriarch of 
German literature thought of him, and being unable to read 
German, Byron sent these articles to Hoppner, at Venice, beg- 
ginsj him to translate them. 

"... If I may judge by two notes of admiration (gen- 
erally put after something ridiculous by us), and the word 
^ hypocondrischy they are any thing but favorable, I shall 
regret this ; for I should have been proud of Goethe's good 
word ; but I sha'n't alter my opinion of him, even though he 
should be (savage), , , , Never mind — soften nothing — I am 
literary proof — as one says of a material object, when he puts 
it to the proof of fire and water," etc. 

The article was any thing but favorable. After recogniz- 
ing' that the author of " Manfred" is gifted with wonderful 
genius, Goethe pretends that it is an imitation of his " Faust," 
and thereupon writes a tissue of fanciful notions which he 
palms off upon the world. 

On learning all this, Byron was by no means put out, but 
lauglied heartily at the notion of the author of " Werthcr " 
accusing him of inciting others to a disgust of life. He won- 
dered at such a man as Goethe giving credence to such silly 
fables, and giving out as authentic what were merely suppo- 
sitions. Instead of being angry at this evident hostihty, he 
declared that the article was intended as favorable to him, 
and, as an acknowledgment, wished to dedicate to him the 
tragedy of "Marino Faliero," upon which he was engaged. 
In the dedication, which was only projected, the reality of his 
admiration for Goethe soars above some jesting expressions. 

To Goethe also he wished to dedicate " Sardanapalus." " I 
mean," said he, at Pisa, " to dedicate 'Werner ' to Goethe. I 
look upon him as the greatest genius that the age has pro- 
duced. I desired Murray to inscribe his name to a former 
work ; but he said my letter containing the order came too 
late. It would have been more worthy of him than this. I 
have a great curiosity about every thing relating to Goethe, 



Qualities of Lord Byron's Heart. 277 

and please myself with thinking there is some analogy be- 
tween our characters and writings. So much interest do I 
take in him, that I offered to give £100 to any person who 
would translate his memoirs for my own reading. Shelley 
has sometimes explained part of them to me. He seems to be 
very superstitious, and is a believer in astrology, or rather 
was, for he was very young when he wrote the first part of 
his ' Life.' I would give the world to read ' Faust ' in the 
original. I have been urging Shelley to translate it." In 
comparing 'Cain' to 'Faust,' he said, "'Faust' itself is not 
so fine a subject as ' Cain,' which is a grand mystery. The 
mark that was put upon Cain is a sublime and shadowy act ; 
Goethe would have made more of it than I have done." 

Not being able to dedicate " Sardanapalus " to him, he 
dedicated " Werner " " to the illustrious Goethe, by one of 
his humblest admirers." 

All these tokens of sympathy pleased Goethe. Their mu- 
tual admiration of one another brought on an exchange of cour- 
tesies, which ended by creating on both sides quite a warm 

feeling. In a letter which Goethe wrote to M. M , after 

Byron's death, he speaks of his relation with the noble poet; 
after saying how " Sardanapalus " appeared without a dedica- 
tion, of which, however, he was happy to possess a lithographed 
f ac-simile, he adds : — 

" It appeared, however, that the noble lord had not re- 
nounced his project of showing his contemporary and com- 
panion in letters a striking testimony of his friendly inten- 
tions, of which the tragedy of ' Werner ' contains an extreme- 
ly precious evidence." 

It might naturally be expected that the aged German poet, 
after receiving from so celebrated a person such an unhoped- 
for kindness (proof of a disposition so thoroughly amiable, 
and the more to be prized from its rarity in the world), should 
also prepare, on his part, to express most clearly and forci- 
bly a sense of the gratitude and esteem with which he was 
affected : — 

" But this undertaking was so great, and every day seemed 
to make it so much more difficult ; for what could be said of 
an earthly being whose merit could not be exhausted by 
thought, or comprehended by words ? 



278 Qualities of Lord Byron's Heart. 

" But when, in the spring of 1823, a young man of amia- 
ble and engaging manners, a M. St. , brought direct from 

Genoa to Weimar, a few words under the hand of this esti- 
mable friend, by way of recommendation, and when, shortly 
after, there was spread a report that the noble lord was about 
to consecrate his great powers and varied talents to high and 
perilous enterprise, I had no longer a plea for delay, and ad- 
dressed to him the stanzas which ends by the lines, — 'And he 
self-known, e'en as to me he's known !' 

" These verses," continued Goethe, " arrived at Genoa, but 
found him not. This excellent friend had already sailed ; but 
being driven back by contrary winds, he landed at Leghorn, 
where this effusion of my heart reached him. On the era of 
his departure, July 23, 1823, he found time to send me a reply, 
full of the most beautiful ideas and the divinest sentiments, 
which will be treasured as an invaluable testimony of worth and 
friendship, among the choicest documents which I possess. 

"What emotions of joy and hope did not that paper at 
once excite ! but now it has become, by the premature death 
of its noble writer, an inestimable relic, and a source of un- 
speakable regret ; for it aggravates, to a peculiar degree in 
me, the mourning and melancholy that pervade the whole 
moral and poetical world, — in me, who looked forward (aft- 
er the success of his great efforts) to the prospect of being 
blessed with the sight of this master-spirit of the age — this 
friend so fortunately acquired : and of having to welcome, on 
his return, the most humane of conquerors." 

These are, no doubt, most noble words, but they were call- 
ed forth by the still nobler conduct of Byron toward him. It 
can not be said that Goethe ever appreciated all that there 
was of worth in his young rival, and a few words at the end 
of his letter make one believe that he still credited some of 
the absurd stories which he had been told about Byron's 
youth, and whom he still believed to be identified in the per- 
son of " Manfred." He entertained a great affection for By- 
ron, no doubt, but he believed, however, that indulgence and 
forgiveness were not only necessary on his part, but actually 
generoiis in him. 

Lord Byron's sympathetic admiration had this peculiarity, 
— that it did not attach to one class of individuals devoted 



Qualities of Lord Byron's Heart. 279 

like himself to poetry, but extended to every class of society. 
The statesman, the orator, the philosopher, the prince, the sub- 
ject, the learned, women, general, or literary men, all were 
equally sure of having justice done to them. At every page 
of his memoranda, we find instances of this. Thus of Mack- 
intosh he says : " He is a rare instance of the union of eveiy 
transcendent talent and great good-nature." 

Of Curran he speaks in the most enthusiastic terms : — 
" I have met Curran at Holland House — he beats every 
body ; — his imagination is beyond conception, and his humor 
(it is difficult to define what is wit) perfect. Then he has 
fifty faces, and twice as many voices, when he mimics ; I nev- 
er met his equal. Now, were I a woman, and e'en a virgin, 
that is the man I should make my Scamander. He is quite 
fascinating. Remember, I have met him only once, and I al- 
most fear to meet him again, lest the impression should be 
lowered. 

" Curran ! Curran's the man who struck me most. Such 
imagination ! There never was any thing like it, that ever I 
saw or heard of. His published life — his published speeches 
— give you no idea of the man, none at all." 

In his memoranda there were equally enthusiastic praises 
of Curran. " The riches," said he, " of his Irish imagination 
were exhaustless. I have heard that man speak more poetry 
than I have ever written — though I saw him seldom, and but 
occasionally." 

In speaking of Colman, he said, " He was most agreeable 
and sociable. He can laugh so well, which Sheridan can not. 
If I could not have them both together, I should like to begin 
the evening with Sheridan, and finish it with Colman." 
He praised loudly the eloquence of Grattan : — 
" I differ with him in politics, but I agree with all those 
who admire his eloquence." 

As to Sheridan, he never ceased his eulogies : — 
" At Lord Holland's the other night, we were all delivering 
our respective and various opinions on him and other hommes 
marquants, and mine was this : — ' Whatever Sheridan has done, 
or chosen to do, has been, jowr excellence, always the best of its 
kind. He has written the best comedy (" School for Scandal "), 
the best drama (in my mind, far before that St. Giles's lampoon. 



280 Qualities of Lord Byron's Heart. 

the " Beggars' Opera "), the best farce (the " Critic," — it is 
only too good for a farce), and the best address (" Monologue on 
Garrick "), and, to crown all, delivered the very best oration 
(the famous " Begum Speech ") ever conceived or heard in 
this country.' " 

His enthusiasm for Shei'idan partook even of a kind of ten- 
der compassion for his great weaknesses and misfortunes. 
He wrote in his memoranda, on one occasion, when Sheridan 
had cried with joy on hearing that Byron had wai'mly praised 
him : — 

" Poor Brinsley, if they were tears of pleasure, I would 
rather have said those few, but most sincere words, than have 
written the " Iliad," or made his own celebrated " Philippic." 
Nay, his own comedy never gratified me more, than to hear 
that he had derived a moment's gratification fi'om any praise 
of mine, humble as it must appeai: to ' my elders, and my bet- 
ters.' " 

And also : — 

" Poor, dear Sherry ! I shall never forget the day when he, 
Rogers, Moore, and myself, spent the time from six at night 
till one o'clock in the morning, without a single yawn ; we 
listening to him, and he talking all the time." 

When he speaks of great men recently dead, — of Burke, 
Pitt, Burns, Goldsmith, and others of his distinguished con- 
temporaries, — he is never-ending in his praise of them. His 
affectionate admiration for so many went so far, almost, as to 
frighten him into the belief that it was a weakness : after hav- 
ing said — " I like A , I like B . By Mohammed !" he ex- 
claims in his memoranda, " I begin to think I like every body ; 
a disposition not to be encouraged ; a sort of social gluttony, 
that swallows every thing set before it." 

Not only was it a pleasure to him to praise those who de- 
served it, but he would not allow the dead to be blamed, nor 
the illustrious among the living ; we all know how much he 
admired the talents of Madame de Staiil : " II avait pour elle des 
admirations ois^mees." " Campbell abused Corinne," he says 
in his journal, 1813: "I reverence and admire him; but I 
won't give up my opinion. Why should I ? I read her again 
and again, and there can be no affectation in this. I can not be 
mistaken (except in taste) in a book I read and lay down and 



Qualities of Lord Byron's Heart. 281 

take up again ; and no book can be totally bad, which finds 
some, even one reader, who can say as much sincerely." 

And elsewhere : 

" H laughed, as he does at every thing German, in which, 

however, I think he goes a little too far. B , I hear, con- 
temns it too. But there are fine passages ; and, after all, what 
is a work — any or every work — but a desert with fountains, 
and, perhaps, a grove or two every day's journey ? To be 
sui'e, in mademoiselle, what we often mistake and 'pant for' 
as the ' cooling stream,' turns out to be the ' mirage ' {critice, 
verbiage) ; but we do, at last, get to something like the temple 
of Jupiter Ammon, and then the waste we have passed is only 
remembei'ed to gladden the contrast." 

He who was so sparing of answers to his own detractors, 
could not allow a criticism against a friend to be left unan- 
swered. We have seen how he defended Scott, Shelley, Cole- 
ridge, and numerous other remarkable persons, whenever they 
were unjustly attacked, although they were alive to defend 
themselves. The respect and justice which he claimed for the 
dead was equally proportioned. " Do not forget," he wrote 
to Moore on hearing that he was about to write the " Life of 
Sheridan ;" " do not forget to sj^are the living \oithout insult- 
ing the cleacV 

On reading, at Ravenna, that Schlegel said, that Dante 
was not popular in Italy, and accused him of want of j^athos : 
" 'Tis false," said he, with indignation ; " there have been more 
editors and commentators (and imitators ultimately) of Dante, 
than of all their poets put together. Not a favorite ! Why 
they talk Dante, write Dante, and think and dream Dante at 
this moment (1821) to an excess which would be ridiculous, 
but that he deserves it. 

" In the same style this German talks of gondolas on the 
Arno — a precious fellow to dare to speak of Italy ! 

" He says, also, that Dante's chief defect is a want, in a 
word, of gentle feelings. Of gentle feelings ! and this in the 
face of 'Francesca of Rimini' — and the father's feelings in 
' Ugolino ' — and ' Beatrice' — and ' La Pia !' Why, there is a 
gentleness in Dante beyond all gentleness, when he is tendei'. 
It is true, that in treating of the Christian Hades, or Hell, 
there is not much scope or room for gentleness; but who 



282 Qualities of Lord Byron's Heart. 

hut Dante could have introduced any ' softness ' at all into Hell? 
Is there any in Milton ? No — and Dante's heaven is all love^ 
and glory, and majesty.'''' 

We have alluded to his admiration for Pope. It was such 
as to ajDpear almost a kind of filial love. He was sorry, mor- 
tified, and humbled, not to find in Westminster Abbey the 
monument of so great a man : — 

" Of all the disgraces that attach to England, the greatest," 
said he, " is that there should be no place assigned to Pope in 
Poets' Corner. I have often thought of erecting a monument 
to him at my own expense in Westminster Abbey ; and hope 
to do so yet." 

To add any thing more to show how totally Byron was 
free from all sentiments of an envious nature, would be to ex- 
haust the subject, and to abuse the reader's patience. This 
absence of envy in him shows itself so clearly in all his say- 
ings and doings, that it appears to be impossible to doubt it, 
and yet he has not been spared even such a calumny ! I do 
not allude to the French critics, who neither knew the man 
nor the author, and whose systematic attacks have no value ; 
but I allude to a certam article in the " London Magazine," 
which appeared shortly before his death, under the title of 
" Personal Character of Lord Byron," and which caused some 
sensation because it appeared to have been written by some one 
who had known Byron intimately. It was all the more perfid- 
ious because it gave an appearance of truth to a great many 
falsehoods, derived from the truth with which these falsehoods 
were mixed. It was the work of one who had gone to 
Greece, there to play a great part, but who, having failed in 
his attempt and exposed himself to the laughter of his friends, 
felt a kind of jealousy for Byron's success in that line, and re- 
venged himself by saying, among other things, " that it was 
dangerous for Byron's friends to rise in the world, if they pre- 
ferred his friendship to their glory, because, as soon as they 
arrived at a certain pre-eminence, he was sure to hate them." 

Such a calumny exasperated Byron's real friends, and 
among these Count Gamba, who hastened to reply to it, by' 
publishing an interesting book, precious from its veracity, and 
which does equal credit to Byron and to the young man hon- 
ored with his friendship. After analyzing the anonymous 



Qualities of Lord Byron's Heart. 283 

article, Count Garaba goes on co say : " My own opinion is 
just the contraiy to that of the writer in the magazine. I 
think he prided himself on the successes of his friends, and 
cited them as a proof of discernment in the choice of some of 
his companions. This I know, that of envy he had not the 
least spark in his whole disposition : he had strong antipa- 
thies, certainly, to one or two individuals ; but I have always 
understood, from those most likely to know, that he never 
broke with any of the friends of his youth, and that his ear- 
liest attachments were also his last.' 

It may be remai-ked that Byron's popularity made it diffi- 
cult for him to indulge sentiments of envy. But without re- 
ferring to the unstable character of popularity, was not his 
own attacked by the jealousy of those who wished to pull him 
dawn from the pedestal of fame, to which they hoped them- 
selves to rise ? Did he not think, some years before his 
death, that his popularity was wavering, and that his rivals 
would pi-ofit by it ? Was he less pleased at the success of 
his friends ? Does not all he said, and all he did, prove that 
where he blamed he did so unwillingly, from a sense of jus- 
tice and truth ; but that when he praised, he did so to satisfy 
a desire of his heart ? 

We have dwelt at considerable length upon this subject, 
because we believe that a total absence of envy is so rare 
among poets, and so conspicuous in Lord Byron, that we can 
take it to be the criterion of his nobility of soul. We can sum 
up, therefore, all we have said, by declaring, that if Byron has 
been envied by all his enemies, and even his friends, with, per- 
haps, the exception of Shelley, and has not himself envied one, 
though he suffered personally from the consequences of their 
jealousy, it is because the great kindness of his nature made 
him the least envious of men. 



284 Benevolence AND Kindness 



CHAPTER IX. 
BENEVOLENCE AND KINDNESS OF LORD BYRON. 

BENEVOLENCE. 

The benevolence of Byi'on's character constitutes the prin- 
cipal characteristic of his nature, and was particularly remark- 
able from its power. All the good qualities in Byron do not 
show the same force in the ^ame degree. In all the senti- 
ments which we have analyzed and given in proof of his good- 
ness, though each may be very strong, and even caj^able of in- 
spiring him with the greatest sacrifice, yet one might find in 
each that personal element, inherent in different degrees to 
our purest and most generous affections, since the impulse 
which dictates them is evidently based upon a desire to be 
satisfied with ourselves. The same thing might be said of 
his benevolence, had it been only the result of habit : but if it 
had been this, if it had been intermittent, and of that kind 
which does not exclude occasional harshness and even cruel- 
ty, I would not venture to present it to the reader as a proof 
of Byron's goodness. 

His benevolence had nothing personal in its elements. It 
was a kind of universal and habitual charity, which gives 
without hope of return, which is more occupied with the good 
of others than with its own, and which is called for only by 
the instinctive desire to alleviate the sufferings of others. If 
such a quality has no right to be called a virtue, it nevertheless 
imprints upon the man who possesses it an ineffaceable char- 
acter of greatness. 

There was not a single moment in his life in which it did 
not reveal itself in the most touching actions. We have seen 
how neither happiness nor misfortune could alter it. 

As a child, he went one day to bathe with a little school- 
fellow in the Don, in Scotland, and having but one very small 
Shetland pony between them, each one walked and rode al- 



Of Lord Byron, 285 

ternately. When they reached the bridge, at a point where 
tlie river becomes sombre and romantic, Byron, wiio was on 
foot, recollected a legendary prophecy, which says : — 

"Brig o' Balgounie, black's your wa': 
Wi' a wife's ae son aud a mare's ae foal 
Doun ye shall fa'!" 

Little Byron stopped his companion, asked him if he remem- 
bered the prediction, and declared that as the pony might 
very well be " a mare's ae foal," he intended to cross first, for 
although both only sons, his mother alone would mourn him, 
while the death of his friend, whose father and mother were 
both alive, would cause a twofold grief.* 

As a stripling, he saw at Southwell a poor woman sally 
mournfully from a shop, because the Bible she wished to pur- 
chase costs more money than she possesses. Byron hastens 
to buy it, and, full of joy, runs after the poor creature to give 
it to her. As a young man, at an age when the effervescence 
and giddiness of youth forget many things, he never forgot 
that to seduce a young girl is a crime. Then, as ever, he was 
less the seducer than the seduced. 

Moore tells us that Byron was so keenly sensitive to the 
pleasure or pain of those with whom he lived, that while in 
his imaginary realms he defied the universe, in real life a frown 
or a smile could overcome him. 

Proud, energetic, independent, intrepid, benevolence alone 
rendered Lord Byron so flexible, patient, and docile to the re- 
monstrances or reproaches of those who loved him, and to 
whom he allowed fi-iendly motives, that he often sacrificed 
his own talent to this genial and kindly sentiment. The Rev. 
Mr. Beecher, disapproving as too free one of the poems he 
had just published at the age of seventeen, in his first edi- 
tion of the " Hours of Idleness," Lord Byron withdrew and 
burnt the whole edition. At the solicitation of Dallas and 
Gifford he suppresses, in the second canto of " Childe Har- 
old," the very stanzas he preferred to all the rest. Madame 

G , grieved at the persecution drawn down on him by 

the first canto of " Don Juan," begs him to discontinue the 
poem, and he ceased to write it. 

* Gait's Life of Byron, p. 329. 



286 Benevolence and Kindness 

At the request of Madame de Stael, he consented, in spite 
of his great disinclination, to attempt a reconciliation with 
Lady Byron. 

The " Curse of Minerva," a poem written in Greece, while 
he was still painfully impressed by the artistic piracies of Lord 
Elgin in the " Parthenon," was in the press and on the eve of 
publication; but Lord Elgin's friends reminded him of the 
pain it would inflict on him and on his family, and the poem 
was sacrificed. No one ever bore more generously than he 
with reproaches made Avith good-will and kindness. This 
amiable disposition, observed in Greece by Mr. Finlay, led 
him to say that it amazed him. As regards Lord Byron's ten- 
derness toward his friends, it was always so great and con- 
stant, that we have thought it right to devote a long article to 
it. We will, however, quote as another instance of the deli- 
cacy of his friendship and his fear of offending his friends, or 
of giving them pain, a letter which Moore also cites as a proof 
of his extreme sensitiveness in this respect. 

This letter was addressed to Mr. Bankes, his friend and 
college companion, on one occasion when Byron believed he 
had offended him involuntarily : — 

" My dear Baxkes, — My eagerness to come to an expla- 
nation has, I trust, convinced you that whatever my unlucky 
manner might inadvertently be, the change was as uninten- 
tional as (if intended) it would have been ungrateful. I real- 
ly was not aware that, while we were together, I had evinced 
such caprice. That we were not so much in each other's 
company as I could have wished, I well know ; but I think so 
astute an observer as yourself must have perceived enough to 
explain this, without supposing any slight to one in whose so- 
ciety I have pride and pleasure. Recollect that I do not al- 
lude here to ' extended ' or ' extending ' acquaintances, but to 
circumstances you will imderstand, I think, on a little reflec- 
tion. 

" And now, my dear Bankes, do not distress me by suppos- 
ing that I can think of you, or you of me, otherwise than I 
trust we have long thought. You told me not long ago, that 
my temper was improved, and I should be sorry that opinion 
should be revoked. Believe me, your friendship is of more ac- 



Of Lord Byron. 287 

count to me than all those absurd vanities in which, I fear, 
you conceive me to take too much interest. I have never dis- 
puted your superiority, or doubted (seriously) your good-will, 
and no one shall ever ' make mischief between us ' without the 
sincere regret on the part of your ever affectionate, etc. 

" Byeon." 

In the midst of the unexampled enthusiasm of a whole na- 
tion, Byron is neither touched by the adoration which his 
genius inspires, nor the endless praises which are bestowed 
upon him, nor the love declarations which crowd his table, nor 
the flattering expressions of Lord Holland, who ranks him 
next to Walter Scott as a poet, and to Burke as an orator ; 
nor indeed by those of Lord Fitzgerald, who, notwithstanding 
a flogging at Harrow, can not bear malice against the author 
of " Childe Harold," but desires to forgive. To be the friend 
of those whom his satire offended, so penetrates him with 
disgust for that poem, that his dearest wish is to lose every 
trace of it ; and, though the fifth edition is nearly completed, 
he gives orders to his publisher, Cawthorn, to burn the whole 
edition. 

It is well known that on the occasion of the opening of the 
new Drury Lane Theatre, the committee called upon all En- 
gland's poetical talent for an inaugural address. The com- 
mittee received many, but found none worthy of adoption. 
It was then that Lord Holland advised that Lord Byron, 
should be applied to, whose genius and populaiity would en- 
hance, he said, the solemnity of the occasion. Lord Byron 
after a refusal, and much hesitation arising partly from mod- 
esty and partly from the knowledge that the rejected authors 
would make him pay a heavy price for his triumph, at last, 
with much reluctance, accepted the invitation, merely to oblige 
Lord Holland. He exchanged with the latter on this topic a 
long correspondence, revealing so thoroughly his docility and 
modesty, that Moore declares these letters valuable as an illus- 
tration of his character ; they show, in truth, the exceeding 
pliant good-nature with which he listened to the counsel and 
criticism of his friends. " It can not be questioned," says he, 
" that this docility, which he invariably showed in matters 
upon which most authors are generally tenacious and irritable, 



288 Benevolence and Kindness 

was a natural essence of his character, and which might have 
been displayed on much more important occasions had he been 
so fortunate as to become connected with people capable of 
understanding and of guiding him." 

Another time Moore wrote to him at Pisa : — " Knowing 
you as I do, Lady Byron ought to have discovered, that you 
are the most docile and most amiable man that ever existed, 
for those who live with you." 

His hatred of contradiction and petty teasing, his repug- 
nance to annoy or mortify any one, arose from the same cause. 
Once, after having replied with his usual frankness to an in- 
quiry of Madame de Stael, that he thought a certain step ill- 
advised, he wrote in his memorandum-book : — " I have since 
z'eflected that it would be possible for Mrs. B to be pa- 
troness ; and I regret having given my opinion, as I detest 
getting people into difficulties with themselves or their favor- 
ites." 

And again : — 

" To-day C called, and, while sitting here, in came 

Merivale. Dui'ing our colloquy, C (ignorant that M 

was the writer) abused the mawkishness of the 'Quarterly 
Review,' on Grimm's correspondence. I (knowing the secret) 

changed the conversation as soon as I could, and C went 

away quite convinced of having made the most favorable im- . 

pression on his new acquaintance I did not look at 

him while this was going on, but I felt like a coal ; for I like 
Mei'ivale, as well as the article in question." 

HIS IXDULGENCE. 

His indulgence, so great toward all, was excessive toward 
his inferiors. 

"Lord Byron," says Medwin, "was the best of masters, 
and it may be asserted that he was beloved by his servants ; 
his goodness even extended to their families. He liked them 
to have their children with them. I remember, on one occa- 
sion, as we entered the hall, coming back from our walk, we 
met the coachman's son, a boy of three or four years of age. 
Byron took the child up in his arms and gave him ten pauls." 

" His indulgence toward his servants," says Mr. Hoppner, 
" was almost reprehensible, for even when they neglected their 



Of Lord Byron. 289 

duty, he appeared rather to laugh at than to scold them, and 
he never could make ujd his mind to send them away, even aft- 
er threatening to do so." 

Mr. Hoppner qiiotes several instances of this indulgence, 
which he frequently Avitnessed. I will relate one in which his 
kindness almost amounts to virtue. On the point of leaving 
for Ravenna, whither his heart passionately summoned him, 
Tita Falier, his gondolier, is taken for the conscription. To 
release him it is not only necessary to pay money, but also to 
take certain measures, and to delay his departure. The money 
was given, and the much-desired jouiney postponed. 

" The result was," says Hoppner, " that his servants were 
so attached to him that they would have borne every thing 
for his sake. His death plunged them into the deepest grief. 
I have in my possession a letter written to his family by By- 
ron's gondolier, Tita, who followed him from Venice to Greece, 
and remained with him until his death. The poor fellow 
speaks of his master in touching terms : he declares that in 
Byron he has lost rather a father than a master, and he does 
not cease to dilate upon the goodness with which Byron look- 
ed after the interests of all who served him." 

Jletcher also wrote to Murray after his master's death : — 

" Pray forgive this scribbling, for I scarcely know what I 
do and say. I have served Lord Byron for twenty years, and 
his lordshij) Avas always to me rather a father than a master. 
I am too distressed to be able to give you any particulars 
about his death." 

Lord Byron's benevolence also shone forth in his tender- 
ness toward children, in the pleasure he experienced in min- 
gling in their amusements, and in making them presents. In 
general, to procure a moment's enjoyment to any one was real 
happiness to him. 

Quite as humane as he was benevolent, ci'uelty or ferocity 
he could not brook, even in imagination. His genius, although 
so bold, could not bear too harrowing a plot. "I wanted to 
write something upon that subject," he told Shelley at Pisa, 
" as it is extremely tragical, but it was too heartrending for 
my nerves to cope Avith." 

His Avorks, moreoA^er, from beginning to end, prove this. 
An analysis of the character of all his heroes Avill prove that, 



290 Benevolence and Kindness 

however daring, they are never ferocious, harsh, nor perverse. 
Even Conrad the Corsair, whose type is sketched from a fe- 
rocious race, and who is placed in circumstances that tempt 
to inhumanity, — Conrad is yet far removed from cruelty. 
The drop of blood on Gulnare's fair brow makes him shud- 
der, and almost forget that it Avas to save him that she became 
guilty. The cruel deeds of a man not only prevented Lord 
Byron from feeling the least symj^athy for him, but even made 
gratitude toward him a burden. However much Ali Pasha, 
the fierce Viceroy of Janina, may overwhelm him with kind- 
ness, Avish to treat him as a son, address him in writing as 
" Excellentissime and Carissime," the cruelties of such a friend 
are too revolting for Byron to i>rofit by his offer of services. 
He calls him the man of war and calamity, and in immortal 
verse perpetuates the memory of his crimes, and even foretells 
the death he actually died a feio years later. He can forgive 
him the Aveakness of the flesh, but not those crimes Avhich arc 
deaf to pity's voice, and Avhich, to be condemned in every man, 
are still more so in an old man : — 

" Blood follows blood, and through this mortal span 
In bloodier acts conclude those wlio with blood began," 

The recollection of human massacres spoilt in his eyes even 
a beautiful spot. In exalting the Rhine, the beautiful river he 
so much admired, the remembrance of all the blood spilt on its 
banks saddened his heart : — 

"Then to see 
The valley of sweet waters, were to know 
Eartli paved lilic Heaven ; and to seem such to me 
Even now what wants tliy stream ? — that it should Lethe be : 

But o'er the blacken'd memory's blighting dream 
Thy waves would vainly roll, all sweeping as they seem." 

As to being himself a Avitness and spectator of scenes of vi- 
olence, it Avas an effort Avhich exceeded the strength, hoAvever 
great, of his Avill. Gifted Avith much psychological curiosity, 
and holding the theory that every thing should be seen, he 
Avas present at Rome at the execution of three murderers, who 
Avere to be put to death, on the eve of his departure. This 
spectacle agitated him to such a degree that it brought on a 
fever. 

In Spain he attended a bull-fight. The painful impression 



Of Lord Byron. 291 

pvoclnced by the barbarous sight is iininortalized in verse {vide 
" Childe Harold," 1st canto). 

But his actions, above all, testify to his humane disposition. 
He never heard of the misfortune or suffering of a fellow- 
creature without endeavoring to relieve it, whether in London, 
Venice, Ravenna, Pisa, or Greece; he spared neither gold, 
time, nor labor to achieve this object. At Pisa, hearing that 
a wretched man, guilty of a sacrilegious theft, was to be con- 
demned to cruel torture, he became ill with dread and anxiety. 
He wrote to the English ambassador, and to the consuls, beg- 
ging for their interposition ; neglected no chance, and did not 
rest until he acquired the certainty that the penalty inflicted 
on the culprit w^ould be more humane. 

In Greece, where traits of generous compassion fill the rest 
of his life, Count Gamba relates that Colonel Napier, then re- 
siding in the Island of Cephalonia, one day i-ode in great haste 
to Lord Byron, to ask for his assistance, a number of work- 
men, employed in making a road, having been buried under 
the crumbling side of a mountain in consequence of an imj^ru- 
dent operation. Lord Byron immediately disjoatched his phy- 
sician, and, although just sitting down to table, had his horses 
saddled, and galloped off to the scene of the disaster, accom- 
panied by Count Gamba and his suite. Women and children 
wept and moaned, the crowd each moment increased, lamen- 
tations were heard on all sides, but, whether from despair or 
laziness, none came forward. Generous anger overcame Lord 
Byi'on at this scene of woe and shame; he leapt from his 
horse, and, grasping the necessary implements, began with his 
own hands the Avork of setting free the poor creatures, who 
were there buried alive. His example aroused the courage 
of the others, and the catastrophe was thus mitigated by the 
rescue of several victims. Count Gamba, after dwelling on 
the good Lord Byron did everywhere, and on the admirable 
life he led in Greece, expresses himself as follows in a letter to 
Mr. Kennedy ; — 

" One of his principal objects in Greece was to awaken the 
Turks as well as the Greeks to more humane sentiments. You 
know how he hastened, whenever the opportunity arose, to pur- 
chase the freedom of woman and children, and to send them 
back to their homes. He frequently, and not Avithout incurring 



292 Benevolence and Kindness 

clanger to himself, rescued Turks from the sanguinary grasp 
of the Greek corsairs. When a Moslem brig drifted ashore 
near Missolonghi, the Greeks wanted to capture the Avhole 
crew ; but Lord Byron opposed it, and promised a reward of 
a crown for each sailor, and of two for each officer rescued." 

" Coming to Greece," wrote Lord Byron, " one of my prin- 
cipal objects was to alleviate, as much as possible, the miseries 
incident to a warfare so cruel as the present. When the dic- 
tates of humanity are in question, I know no difference be- 
tween Turks and Greeks. It is enough that thofee who want 
assistance ai-e men, in order to claim the pity and pi'otection 
of the meanest pretender to humane feelings. I have found 
here twenty-four Turks, including women and children, who 
have long pined in distress, far from the means of support and 
the consolations of their home. The Government has consign- 
ed them to me : I transmit them to Prevesa, whither they de- 
sire to be sent. I hope you will not object to take care that 
they may be restored to a place of safety, and that the govern- 
or of your town may accei)t of my present. The best recom- 
pense I could hope for would be to find that I had inspired the 
Ottoman commanders with the same sentiments toward those 
unhappy Greeks, who may hereafter fall into their hands. 

" Byron." 

" Lord Byi'on," pursues Count Gamba, " never could wit- 
ness a calamity as an idle spectator. He was so alive to the 
sufferings of others, that he sometimes allowed himself to be 
imposed upon too readily by. tales of woe. Tlie least sem- 
blance of injustice excited his indignation, and led him to in- 
tervene without a thought for the consequences to himself of 
his interposition ; and he entertained this feeling not only for 
his fellow-creatures but even toward animals." 

His compassion extended to every living creature, to every 
thing that could feel. Without alluding to his well-known 
fondness for dogs, and for the animals of every kind he liked 
to have about him, and of which he took the greatest care, it 
will be sufficient to point out the motive which led him to de- 
prive himself of the pleasures of the chase, — a pastime that 
would have been, from his keen enjoyment of bodily exercises, 



Of Lord Byron. 293 

so congenial to his tastes. The reason is found in his memo- 
randura for 1814 : — 

" The last bird I ever fired at was an eaglet, on the shore of 
the Gulf of Lepanto, near Vostitza. It was only wounded, 
and I tried to save it, the eye was so bright : but it pined and 
died in a few days ; and I never did since, and never will, at- 
tempt the death of another bii-d." 

Angling, as well as shooting, he considered cruel. 

"And angling, too, that solitary vice, 
Whatever Izaak Walton sings or saj's : 
The quaint, old, cruel coxcomb, in his gullet 
Should have a hook, and a small trout to pull it." 

And, as if he feared not to have expressed strongly enough 
liis aversion for the cruelties of angling, he adds in a note : — 

" It would have taught him humanity at least. This sen- 
timental savage, whom it is a mode to quote (among the novel- 
ists) to show their sympathy for innocent sports and old songs, 
teaches how to sew up frogs, and break their legs "by way of 
experiment, in addition to the art of angling, — the crudest, the 
coldest, and the stupidest of pretended sports. They may 
talk about the beauties of nature, but the angler merely thinks 
of his dish of fish ; he has no leisure to take his eyes from off 
the streams, and a single bite is worth to him more than all 
the scenery aroitnd. Besides, some fish bite best on a rainy 
day. The whale, the shark, and the tunny fishery have some- 
what of noble and perilous in them ; even net-fishing, trawling, 
etc., are more humane and useful. But angling ! — no angler 
can be a good man." 

" One of the best men I ever knew (as humane, delicate- 
minded, generous, and excellent a creature as any in the world) 
was an angler ; true, he angled with painted flies, and would 
have been incapable of the extravagances of Izaak Walton." 

" The above addition Avas made by a friend, in reading over 
the MS. : — 'Audi alteram pai^tem ' — I leave it to counterbal- 
ance my own observations." 

It is well known that Lord Byron would not deride certain 
stiperstitions, and was sometimes tempted to exclaim with 
Hamlet, — 

"There are more tilings in Heaven and earth, Horatio, 
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy." 



294 Benevolence and Kindness 

Pie, consequently, also conformed to the English superstition, 
which involves, under pain of au unlucky year, the eating of 
a goose at Michaelmas. Alas ! once only he did not eat one, 
and that year was his last ; but he eat none because, during 
the journey from Pisa to Genoa, on Michaelmas eve, he saw 
the two white geese in their cage in the wagon that followed 
liis carriage, and felt so sorry for them that he gave orders 
they should be spared. After his arrival at Genoa they be- 
came such pets that he caressed them constantly. When he 
left for Greece he recommended them to the care of Mr. Ken- 
nedy, who was probably kind to them for the sake of their 
illustrious protector. 

Not only could Lord Byron never contribute voluntarily 
to the Suffering of a living being, but his pity, his commis- 
eration for the sufferings of his fellow-creatures showed itself 
all his life in such habitual benevolence, in sucli boundless gen- 
erosity, that volumes would be necessary to record his noble 
deeds. 

Although, in thus analyzing and enumerating the proofs 
of his innate goodness, we have declared we did not entertain 
the pretension of elevating them to the rank of lofty virtues, 
we are yet compelled to state that if his generosity was too 
instinctive to be termed a virtue, it was yet too admirable to 
be considered as an instinct ; that while in remaining a quality 
of his heart, it elevated and transformed itself often through 
the exertion of his will into an absolute virtue, and through 
all its phases and in its double nature, it presented in Loi-d 
Byron a remai'kably rare blending of all that is most lovable 
and estimable in the human soul. 

Here we merely speak of the genei'osity that showed itself 
in benefits conferred. As to that which consists rather in 
self-denial, sacrifice which forgives injuries, and which is the 
gi-eatest triumph of mortal courage, that, in a word, is indeed 
a sublime virtue. Such generosity, if he possessed it, we will 
treat of in another chapter.* 

As we here wish to establish by facts that only which ap-* 
pears to have been the impulse of his good heart, the difficul- 
ty lies in the choice of pi'oofs, and in the necessity of limiting 

* See chapter " Generosity raised to a Virtue." 



Of Lord Byron. 295 

our narrative. We will, therefoi-e, in order not to convert 
this chapter into a volume, forbear from quoting more than 
a few instances ; but justice requires ns to say, that misfor- 
tune or poverty never had recourse to him in vain ; that nei- 
ther the pecuniary embarrassments of his youth, nor the slen- 
der merits of the applicants, nor any of the pretexts so con- 
venient to weak or hypocritical* liberality, ever could become 
a reason with him to refuse those who stretched out their 
hand to him. The claim of adversity, as adversity, Avas a suf- 
licient and sacred one to him, and to relieve it an imperious 
impulse. 

An appeal was once made to Lord Byron's generosity by 
an individual whose bad repute alone might have justified a 
harsh rebuff. But Lord Byron, whose charity was of a higher 
order, looked upon it otherwise. 

"Why," said Murray, "should you give £150 to this bad 
writer, to whom nobody would give a penny?" "Precise- 
ly because nobody is willing to give him any thing is he 
the more in need that I should help him," answered Lord 
Byron. 

A certain Mr. Ashe superintended the publication of a pa- 
per called " The Book," the readers of which were attracted 
rather by its ill nature and scandal, and the revelations it 
made in lifting the veil that had so far concealed the most 
delicate mysteries, than by the talent of the author. In a fit 
of repentance this man wrote to Lord Byron, alleging his great 
poverty as an apology for having thus prostituted his pen, and 
imploring from Lord Byron a gift to enable him to live more 
honorably in future. Lord Byron's answer to this letter is so 
remarkable for its good sense, kindness, and high tone of hon- 
or, that we can not ref uain from reiDroducing it. 

" Sir, — I leave town for a few days to-morrow ; on my re- 
turn I will answer your letter more at length. Whatever may 
be your situation, I can not but commend your resolution to 

* When travelling in Greece, he often found himself in straitened circum- 
stances, merely because he had helped a friend. 

"It is probable," he wrote to liis mother from Athens in 1811, "I may steer 
homeward in spring: but, to enable me to do that, I must have remittances. 
Mjr own funds would have lasted mo very well : but I was obliged to assist a 
friend, who I know will pay me, but in the mean time I am out of pocket." 



296 Benevolence and Kindness 

abjure and abandon the publication and composition of works 
such as those to which you have alluded. Depend upon it 
they amuse few, disgrace both reader and writer, and benefit 
none. It will be my wish to assist you, as far as my limited 
means will admit, to break such a bondage. In your answer 
inform me what sum you think would enable you to extricate 
yourself from the hands of your employers, and to regain, at 
least, temporary independence, and I shall be glad to contrib- 
ute my mite toward it. At present, I must conclude. Your 
name is not unknown to me, and I regret, for my own sake, 
that you have ever lent it to the works you mention. In say- 
ing this, I merely repeat your own words in your letter to me, 
and have no wish whatever to say a single syllable that may 
appear to insult your misfortunes. If I have, excuse me : it 
is unintentional. Bykon." 

Mr. Ashe replied with a request for a sum of about four 
thousand fi'ancs. Lord Byron having somewhat delayed an- 
swei'ing him, Ashe reiterated his request, complaining of the 
procrastination ; whereupon, " with a kindness which few," 
says Moore, " would imitate iu a similar case," Byron wrote 
to him as follows : — 

" Sir, — When you accuse a stranger of neglect, you forget 
that it is possible business or absence from London may have 
interfered to delay his answer, as has actually occurred in the 
present instance. But to the point. I am willing to do what 
I can to extricate you fi-om your situation I will de- 
posit in Mr. Murray's hands (with his consent) the sum you 
mentioned, to be advanced for the time at ten pounds i^er 
month. • 

" P.S: — I write in the greatest hurry, which may make my 
letter a little abrupt ; but, as I said before, I have no wish to 
distress your feelings. Byeon." 

Ashe, a few months later, asked for the whole amount, to 
defray his travelling expenses to Xew South Wales, and Lord 
Byron again remitted to him the entire amount. 

On another occasion, some unhappy person being discussed 
iu harsh terms, the remark was made that he deserved his 



Of Lord Byron. 297 

misery. Lord Byron turned on the accuser, and fired with 
generous anger, " Well !" exclaimed he, " if it be true that 

N is unfortunate, and that he be so through his own 

fault, he is doubly to be pitied, because his conscience must 
poison his grief with remorse. Such are my morals, and that 
is why I pity error and respect misfortune." 

The produce of his poems, as long as he remained in En- 
gland, he devoted to the relief of his j)Oor relations, or to the 
assistance of authors in reduced circumstances. I will not 
speak of certain traits of heroic generosity which averted the 
disgrace and ruin of families, which robbed vice of many 
youthful victims, and would cast in the shade many deeds of 
past and proverbial magnanimity, and deserve the pen of a 
Plutarch to transmit them to j^osterity. 

When we are told, with such admiring comments, of Alex- 
ander's magnanimity in I'especting and restoring to freedom 
the mother and the wife of Darius, we do not learn whether 
those noble women were beautiful and in love with the Mace- 
donian hero. But Lord Byron succored, and restored to the 
right path, many girls, young and gifted with every charm, 
who were so subjugated by the beauty, goodness, and genei-- 
osity of their benefactor, that they fall at his feet, not to implore 
that they might be sent back to their homes, but ready to be- 
come what he bade them. And yet this young man of six- 
and-twenty, thinking them fair, was touched, and tempted per- 
haps, yet sent them home, rescued, and enlightened by the 
counsels of wisdom. 

There is inore than generosity in such actions, and we there- 
fore hold back details for another chapter, in which we will 
examine this quality under various aspects. Here we will 
content ourselves with stating that these noble traits became 
known, almost in spite of himself; for his benevolence was 
also remarkable in this respect, that it was exercised with a 
truly Christian spirit, and in obedience to the Divine precept 
that " the left hand shall not know what the right doeth." 
Having conferred a great favor on one of his friends, Mr. 
Hodgson, who was about to take orders, he wrote in the even- 
ing in his journal : — 

"H has been telling that I .... I am sure, at least, I 

did not mention it, and I wish he had not. He is a good fel- 

N2 



298 Benevolence and Kindness 

low, and I oblige myself ten times more by being of use than 
I did him, — and there's an end on't."* 

It was said of Chateaubriand that if he wished to do any 
thing generous, he liked to do so on his balcony ; the contrary 
may be said of Byron, w^ho would have preferred to have his 
good action hid in the cellars. 

" If we wished to dwell," says Count Gamba in a letter to 
Kennedy, " on his many acts of charity, a volume would not 
suffice to tell you of those alone to which I have been a wit- 
ness. I have known in different Italian towns several honora- 
ble families, fallen into poverty, with whom Lord Byron had 
not the slightest acquaintance, and to whom he nevertheless 
secretly sent large sums of money, sometimes 200 dollars and 
more ; and these persons never knew the name of their bene- 
factor." 

Count Gamba also tells us that, to his knowledge, in Flor- 
ence, a resj^ectable mother of a family, being reduced to great 
penury by the persecution of a malignant and powerful man, 
from whom she had protected the honor of one of her 2>'>'ote- 
gees, Lord Byron, to whom the lady and her persecutor were 
equally unknoMni, sent her assistance, which was powerful 
enough to counteract the evil designs of her foes. He adds 
that, having leanit at Pisa that a great number of vessels had 
been shipwrecked during a violent storm^ in the very harbor 
of Genoa, and that several respectable families were thereby 
completely ruined. Lord Byron secretly sent them money, and 
to some more than 300 dollars. Those who received it never 
knew their benefactor's name. His charity provided above 
all for absent ones, for the old, infirm, and retiring. At Ven- 
ice, where it was difficult to elude the influence of the climate, 
and of the manners of the time, and where he shared for a time 
the mode of life of its young men, it was still charity, and not 
jjleasure, that absorbed the better part of his income. Not 
satisfied with his casual or out-of-the-Avay charities, he grant- 
ed a large number of small monthly and weekly pensions. On 
definitely leaving Venice to re^de in Ravenna, he decided that, 

* It may be observed hei"e, that he was not willinEC, even to confide to paper, 
the nature and degree of the act of kindness. Hodgson wanted thirty-five thou- 
sand francs to establish himself. BjTon actually borrowed this amount, to give 
it to him, as he had not the sum at his disposal. 



Of Lord Byron. 299 

in spite of his absence, these pensions should continue until 
the expiration of liis lease of the Palazzo Mocenigo. Venice 
watched him as jealously as a miser watches his treasure, and 
when he left it the honest poor Avere grieved and the dishon- 
est vexed. Listening to these, one might have been led to 
believe, that Lord Byron had by a vow bound himself and his 
fortune to the service of Venice, and that his departure was a 
spoliation of their rights.* 

In Ravenna his presence had been such a blessing, that his 
departure was considered a public calamity, and the poor of 
the city addressed a petition to the legate, that he might be 
entreated to remain. 

Not a quarter of his fortune, as Shelley said in extolling his 
munificence, but the half of it, did he expend in alms. In Pisa, 
in Genoa, in Greece, his purse was ever open to the needy. 

" Not a day of his life in Greece," says his physician, Doc- 
tor Bruno, " but was marked by some charitable deed : not an 
instance is there on record of a beggar having knocked at 
Lord Byron's door who did not go on his way comforted ; so 
prominent among all his noble qualities was the tenderness of 
his heai't, and its boundless sympathy with suffering and af- 
fliction. His purse was always opened to the poor." After 
quoting several traits of benevolence, he goes on to say: — 
" Whenever it came to the knowledge of Lord Byron that 
any poor persons were lying ill, whatever the maladies or their 
cause, without even being asked to do it, my lord immediate- 
ly sent me to attend to the sufferers. He provided the medi- 
cines, and every other means of alleviation. He founded at 
his own expense a hospital in Missolonghi."f 

This noble quality of his heart had the ring of true gen- 
erosity; that generosity which springs from the desire and 
pleasure to do good, and which is so admirable, that in his 
own estimate of benevolence he always linked it with a sense 
of order. It never had any thing in common with the capri- 
cious munificence of a spendthrift. His exceeding delicacy, 
the loyalty and noble pride of Jiis soul, inspired him with the 
deepest aversion for that egotism and vanity which alike ig- 
nores its own duties and the rights of others. 

* See his "Life in Itah'." t ^i^e Kennedy. 



300 Benevolence and Kindness 

Lord Byrou was, therefore, very methodical in his expend- 
iture. Without stoopiug to details, he Avas most careful to 
maintain equilibrium between his outlay and his income. He 
attended scruj^ulously to his bills, and said he could not go to 
sleep without being on good terms with his friends, and hav- 
ing paid all his debts.* 

He was often tormented, if his agents were tardy in mak- 
ing remittances, with the dread of not being able to meet his 
engagements. Of his own gold he was liberal, but he respect- 
ed the coffers of his creditors. 

" I have the greatest respect for money," he often said in 
jest. He cared for it, indeed, but as a means of obtaining 
rest for his mind, and especially of helping the poor. Al- 
though so generous, he was sometimes annoyed and sorry at 
the thought of having ill-spent his money, because he had in 
the same ratio diminished liis power of doing good. 

We should have given but an unfair idea of the lofty na- 
ture of his generosity, if we did not add that it was not sus- 
tained by any ilhisory hopes of gratitude. These illusions his 
confiding heart had entertained in early manhood, and Avere 
those the loss of which he most regretted ; but their flight, 
though causing bitter disappointment, left his conduct unin- 
fluenced. He expected ingratitude, and was prepared for it ; 
he gave, he said, and did ?iot lend; and preferred to expose 
himself to ingratitude rather than to forsake the iinhappy. 

We fain M'ould have concluded this long chapter, devoted 
to the proofs of his goodness in all its manifestations, by 
gathering the principal testimonies of that goodness which 
were received after Byron's death, and show it in its original 
character and in its modifications through life. But we must 
confine ourselves to the mention of a few testimonies only, 
taken from among those borne him at the outset and at the 
end of his life, so as to extend throughout its course, and to 
show what those who kncAV him personally, and well, thought 
of it. 

Mr. Pigott, a friend and companion of Byron's, who lived 

* "Yesterday I paid him (to Scroope Davies) four thousand eight hundred 
pounds, .... and my mind is much relieved by the removal of that debt," he 
says in his memorandum of 1813. All his difficulties were inherited from his fa- 
ther, find not contracted by hjm personally. 



Of Lord Byron. 301 

at Southwell, in the neigliborhood of Newstead, who travelled 
with Byron during his holidays, told Moore that few people 
understood Byron ; but that he knew well how naturally sen- 
sitive and kind-hearted he w^as, and that there was not the 
slightest particle of malignity in his whole composition. Mr. 
Pigott, who thus sj^oke of Byron, was one of the most revered 
magistrates of his county, and the head of that family with 
whom Byron was wont to spend his holidays, and who loved 
him, both before and after his death, as good people only can 
love and mourn. " Never," says Moore, " did any member of 
that family allow that Byron had a single fault." 

Mr. Lake, another biographer of Byron, says, " I have fre- 
quently asked the country people what sort of a man Lord 
Byron Avas. The impression of his eccentric but energetic 
character was evident in the reply. ' He's the devil of a fel- 
low for comical fancies — He flogs th' oud laird to nothing, but 
he's a hearty good fellow for all that.' " 

Here is Dallas's opinion, which can not be suspected of 
partiality, for reasons which we have elsewhere given ; for he 
believed himself aggrieved, and considered as a great culprit 
the man who, ever so slightly, could depart from the orthodox 
religious teachings ; who had not a blind admiration of his 
country ; who could suffer his heart to be possessed by an af- 
fection which marriage had not legitimatized ; who preferred 
to family pride the satisfaction of paying the debts bequeath- 
ed to him by his ancestors, and Avho could make use of his 
right of selling his lands. Yet, notwithstanding all this, Mr. 
Dallas expresses himself to the following effect: — "At this 
time (1809), when on the eve of publishing his first satire, and 
before taking his seat in the House of Lords, I saw Lord By- 
ron every day. (This was the epoch of his misanthropy). Na- 
ture had gifted him Avith most amiable sentiments, which I 
frequently had occasion to notice, and I have often seen these 
imjM'int upon his fine countenance a really sublime expression. 
His features seemed made expressly to depict the conceptions 
of genius and the storms of passion. I have often wondered 
with admiration at these curious effects. I have seen his face 
lighted up by the fire of poetical inspiration, and, under the 
influence of strong emotions, sometimes express the highest 
degree of energy, and at others all the softness and grace of 



302 Benevolence and Kindness 

mild and gentle affection. When his soul was a prey to pas- 
sion and revenge, it was painful to observe the powerful effect 
upon his features ; but when, on the contrary, he was conquer- 
ed by feelings of tenderness and benevolence (which was the 
natural tendency of his heart, it was delightful to contemplate 
his looks. I went to see Lord Byron the day after Lord 
Falkland's death. He had just seen the inanuiiate body of 
the man w^ith whom, a few days before, he had spent such an 
agreeable time. At intervals, I heard him exclaim to himself, 
and half aloud, ' Poor Falkland !' His look was even more ex- 
pressive than were his words. ' But his wife,' added he, ' she 
is to be pitied !' One could see his soul filled with the most 
benevolent intentions, which Avere sterile.* If ever pure ac- 
tion was done, it Avas that which he then meditated ; and the 
man who conceived it, and who accomplished it, was then pro- 
gressing through thorns and thistles, toward that free but nar- 
row path which leads to heaven." 

Several years later, Mr. Hoppner, English Consul at Ven- 
ice, and who spent his life w4th Byron in that city, wrote in a 
narrative of the causes which created so much disgust in By- 
ron for English travellers, that Byron's affected misanthropy, 
as observable in his first poems, was by no means natural to 
him ; and he adds, that he is certain that he never met Avith 
a man so kind as Byron. 

We might stop here, certain as we are tliat all loyal and 
reasonable readers are not only convinced of Byron's good- 
ness, but experience a noble pleasure in admiring it. We can 
not, however, close this chapter, without calling the attention 
of our feaders to the last and painful proofs given of this 
kindness and goodness of Byron's nature : we allude to the 
extraordinary grief, caused by his death. 

" Never can I forget the stupefaction," says an illustrious 
writer, " into which we Avere plunged by the news of his death. 
So great a part of ourselves died with him, that his death ap- 
peared to us almost impossible, and almost not natural. One 
would have said that a portion of the mechanism of the uni- 
verse had been stopped. To have questioned him, to have 
blamed him, became a remorse for us, and all our veneration 

* Altbouph not rich, and on the pouit of undertakini^ a long and expensive 
journey, he devoted a hirge sum to the alleviation of the wants of that family. 



Of Lord Byron. 303 

for his genius was not half so energetically felt as our tender- 
ness for him. 

"'His last sigh dissolved the charm, the disenchanted earth 
Lost all her lustre. Where her glittering towers? 
Her golden mountains where? All darkened, down 
To nalced waste a dreary vale of j'ears ! 
The great magician's dead !' " — Young. 

Such griefs are certainly reasonable, just, and honorable : 
for the deaths which bury such treasures of genius are real 
public calamities. On hearing of Byron's death, one might 
repeat the beautiful and eloquent words of ]\L de Saint Victor : 

" What a great crime death has committed ! It is some- 
thing like the disappearance of a star, or the extinction of a 
planet, with all the creation it supposed. When great minds 
have accomplished their task, like Shakspeare, Dante, Goethe, 
their departure from the scene of the world leaves in the soul 
the sublime melancholy Avhich presides over the setting of the 
sun, after it has poured out all its rays. But when we hear of 
tlie death of a Raphael, of a Mozart, and especially of Byron, 
struck down in their flight, just at the time when they were 
extending their course, Ave can not refrain from calling these 
an eternal cause for mourning, irrej)arable losses, and incon- 
solable regrets ! A genius who dies prematurely carries treas- 
ures away with him ! How many ideal existences were linked 
with his own ! What sublime thoughts vanish from his brow ! 
What great and charming characters die with him, even be- 
fore they are boi-n ! How many truths postponed, at least, 
for humanity !" 

And we will add : to how many great and noble actions 
his death has put an end ! 

Such regrets do honor as much to those who experience 
them as to those who give them rise. But it is not to the 
enthusiasm created by his genius, nor to the grief evinced by 
the Greek nation, for whom he died, that we will turn for a 
last proof of the goodness of his nature. Such regrets might 
almost be called interested, — emanating, as they do, from the 
knowledge of the loss of a treasure. Of the tears of the heart, 
which were shed for the man without his genius, shall we ask 
that last proof. 

These are the words by which Count Gamba describes liis 
affliction : — ■ 



304 Benevolence of Lord Byron. 

" In vain should I attempt to describe the deep, the dis- 
tressing sorrow that overwhehiied us all. I will not speak of 
myself, but of those who loved him less, because they had seen 
liim less. Not only Mavrocordato and his immediate circle, 
but the whole city and all its inhabitants were, as it seemed, 
stunned by the blow — it had been so sudden, so unexpected. 
His illness, indeed, had been known ; and for the three last 
days, none of us could walk in the streets, without anxious in- 
quiries from every one who met us, of ' How is my lord ?' 
We did not mourn the loss of the great genius, — no, nor that 
of the supporter of Greece — our first tears Avere for our father, 
our patron, our friend. He died in a strange land, and among 
strangers : but more loved, more sincerely wept, he could 
never have been, wherever he had breathed his last. 

" Such was the attachment, mingled with a sort of rever- 
ence and enthusiasm, with which he inspired those around 
him, that there Avas not one of us who would not, for his sake, 
have willingly encountered any danger in the world. The 
Greeks of every class and every age, from Mavrocordato to the 
meanest citizen, sympathized with our sorrows. It was in 
vain that, when we met, Ave tried to keep \ip our spirits — our 
attempts at consolation always ended in mutual tears." 

None but beautiful souls, and those who are really thor- 
oughly good, can be thus regretted; and heartfelt tears are 
only shed for those Avho have spent their life in drying those 
of others. 



Qualities and Viktues of Soul. 305 



CHAPTER X. 
QUALITIES AND VIRTUES OF SOUL. 

ANTIMATEKIALISM. 

Among Lord Byron's natural qualities we may rank his 
antipathy, not only for any thing like low sensuality or gross 
vice, but even for those follies to which youth and human na- 
ture are so prone. Whatever may have been said on this 
liead, and notwithstanding the countenance Loi'd Byron's own 
words may have lent to calumnies too widely believed, it 
will be easy to prove the truth of our assertion. Let us ex- 
amine his actions, his words (when serious), the testimony of 
those who knew him through life, and it will soon appear 
that this natural antipathy with him often attained to the 
height of rare virtue. 

Lord Byron had a passionate nature, a feeling heart, a 
powerful imagination ; and it can not be denied that, after 
the disappointment he experienced in his ethereal love enter- 
tained at fifteen, he fell into the usual round of imiversity 
life. But as he possessed great refinement of mind, never 
losing sight of an ideal of moral beauty, such an existence 
si^eedily became odious to liini. His companions thought it 
all quite natural and pleasant ; but he disapproved of it and 
blamed himself, feeling ashamed in his OAvn conscience. 

It is well known tliat Lord Byron never spared himself 
He invented faults rather than sought to extenuate them. 
And so he fully merits belief, when he happens to do himself 
justice. Let us attend to the following : — 

" I passed my degrees in vice," he says, " very quickly, 
hut they v^ere not after my taste. For my juvenile passions, 
though most violent, were concentrated, and did not willing- 
ly tend to divide and expand on several objects. I could 
have renounced every thing in the world with those I loved, 
or lost it all for them ; but fiery though my nature was, / 



806 Qualities and Virtues of Soul. 

coidd not share without disgust in the dissipation common to 
the place and time.'" 

This makes Moore say, that even at the period to which 
we are alluding, his irregularities were much less sensual, 
much less gross and varied than those of his companions. 

Nevertheless it was his boyish university life that caused 
Lord Byron to be suspected of draAving his own likeness, 
■\vlien two years later, after his return from the East, he 
brought out " Childe Harold " — an imaginary hero, whom he 
imprudently surrounded with real circumstances personal to 
himself 

Moore, with his usual good sense, protests strongly against 
such injustice, saying that, however dissipated his college 
and university life might have been during the two or three 
years previous to his first travels, no foundation exists, excej^t 
in the imagination of the poet, and the credulity or malice of 
the world, for such disgraceful scenes as were represented to 
have taken place at Newstcad, by way of inferences drawn 
from " Childe Harold." " In this iioeni," adds Moore, " he de- 
scribes the habitation of his hero as a monastic dwelling — 

' Condemn'd to uses vile ! 
Where Superstition once had made lier den 
Now Paphian girls were known to sing and smile.' " 

These exaggerated, if not imaginary descriptions, were, 
nevertheless, taken for serious, and literally believed by the 
greater part of his readers. 

Moore continues : " Mr. Dallas, giving way to the same 
exaggerated tone, says, in speaking of the preparations for 
departure made by the young lord, ' He was already satiated 
with pleasure, and disgusted with those comrades who pos- 
sessed no other resource, so he resolved to overcome his 
senses, and accordingly dismissed his harem.' The truth is, 
that Lord Byron did not then even possess sufficient fortune 
to allow himself this Oriental luxury ; his manner of living 
at Newstead was plain and simple. His companions, with- 
out being insensible to the pleasures afibrded by liberal hos- 
pitality, Avere all too intellectual in their tastes and habits to 
give themselves up to vulgar debauchery. As to the allu- 
sions regarding his harem, it appears certain that one or two 
women were sns-pecteA subintroductoi — to use the style of the 



Qualities and Virtues of Soul. 307 

old monks of tlie Abbey — but that even these belonged to 
the servants of the house. This is the utmost that scandal 
could allege as the groundwork for suspicion and accusation." 

These assertions of Moore have been corroborated by 
many other testimonies. I will only relate that mentioned 
by Washington Irving, in the account of his visit to New- 
stead Abbey in 1830. Urged by philosophical curiosity, 
Washington Irving managed to get into conversation with 
a certain Nanny Smith, who had passed all her life at New- 
stead as house-keeper. This old woman, after having chat- 
tered a great deal about Lord Byron and the ghosts that 
haunt^ the Abbey, asserting that though she had not seen 
them, she had heard them quite well, was particularly ques- 
tioned by Mr. Irving as to the mode of life her young master 
led. She certified to his sobriety, and positively denied that 
he had led a licentious life at Newstead with his friends, or 
brought mistresses with him from London. 

" Once, it is true," said the old lady, " he had a pretty 
youth for a page with him. The maids declared it was a 
young woman. But*as lor me, I never could verify the fact, 
and all these servant-girls were jealous, especially one of 
tliem called Lucy. For Lord Byron being kind to her, and 
a fortune-teller having predicted a high destiny for her, the 
poor little thing dreamed of nothing else but becoming a 
great lady, and perhaps of rising to be mistress of the Abbey. 
Ah, well ! but her dreams came to nothing."* 

" Lord Byron," added the old lady, " passed the greater 
part of his time seated on his sofa reading. Sometimes he 
had yoiing noblemen of his acquaintance with him. Then, 
it is true, they amused themselves in playing all sorts of 
tricks — youthful frolics, that was all ; they did nothing im- 
proper for voung gentlemen, nothing that could harm any 
body."t 

" Lord Byron's only amusements at Newstead," says Mr. 
Irving, " were boating, boxing, fencing, and his dogs." 

" His constant occupation was to write, and for that he 

* The history of the pa^e is, however, true. Lord Byron was then nineteen 
years of age. Kot to give his mother the grief of seeing that he had made an ac- 
quaintance she would have disapproved, he brought Miss from Brighton to 

the Abbey, dressed as a page, that she might pass for her brother Gordon. 

I See "Newstead Abbey," by Washington Irving. 



808 Qualities and Virtues of Soul. 

had the habit of sitting u\:> till two and three in the morning. 
Thus his life at Newstead was quite one of seclusion, entire- 
ly devoted to poetiy." 

After having passed a year in this way at Newstead, fol- 
lowing on his college and university life, he left England in 
order to mature his mind under other skies, to forget the in- 
justice of man and the hardships of fortune that had already 
somewhat tinged his nature with gloom. 

Instead of going in quest of emotions, his desire was, on 
the contrary, to avoid both those of the heart and of the senses. 
The admiration felt by the young traveller for charming 
Spanish women and beautiful Greeks did not outstep t|ie lim- 
its of the purest poetry. Nevertheless the stoicism of twen- 
ty, with a heart, sensibility and imagination like his, could 
not be very firm, nor ahvays secure from danger. He did 
actually meet with a formidable enemy at Malta ; for he 
there made acquaintance with Mrs. Spencer Smith, the daugh- 
ter of one ambassador and the wife of another, a woman 
most fascinating from her youth, beauty, mind, and charac- 
ter, as well as by her singular position and strange adven- 
tures. Did he avoid her so much as the stanzas addressed 
to the lovely Floi*encc, in the first canto of " Childe Harold," 
would fain imply ? This may be doubted, on account of the 
ring which they exchanged, and also from several charming 
pieces of verse that testify to another sentiment. 

In any case, he showed strength of mind, and that his 
senses were under the dominion of reason ; for, unable to se- 
cure her happiness or his own, he sought a remedy in flight. 

When writing " Childe Harold," however, about this pe- 
riod, an evil genius suggested expressions, that if taken se- 
riously and in their literal sense, might some day furnish 
the weapons of accusation to his enemies. For, while act- 
ing thus toward Floi-ence, he introduced the episode into 
"Childe Harold" in a way that looks calumnious against 
himself: — 

" Little knew she that seeming marble heart, 

Now mask'd in silence or witliheld by pride, 
Was not unskillful in the spoiler's art. 

And spreads its snares licentious far and wide; 
Nor from the base pursuit had turn'd aside. 
As long as aught was worthy to pursue."' 



Qualities and Virtues of Soul. 309 

" We have here," says Moore, " another instance of his 
projiensity to self-misrepresentation. However great might 
have been the irregularities of his college life, such phrases 
as the ' art of the spoiler' and ' spreading snares ' were in no- 
Avise applicable to them."* 

Gait expresses the same certainty on this head, " Not- 
withstanding," says he, " the unnecessary exposure he makes 
of his dissipation on his first entrance into society (in the 
first two cantos of ' Childe Harold '), it is proved beyond all 
dispute^ that at no period of his existence did Lord Byron 
lead an irregidar life. That on one or two occasions he fell 
into some excesses, may be true ; but his habits were never 
those of a libertine.'''' \ 

And after saying that the declaration by which Byron 
himself acknowledges his antipathy to vice carries more 
weight than all the rest, and that what he says of it is vague 
and metaphysical, he adds : — " But that only further corrobo- 
rates my impression concerning him, — that is to say, that he 
took a sort of vanity in Setting forth his experience in dissipa- 
tion, but that this dissipation never became a habit icith him.'''' 

His true sentiments at this time are well portrayed in his 
letters, and esiDCcially in those addressed to his mother from 
Athens, when she consulted him on the conduct to be ob- 
served toward one of his tenants, a young farmer, who had 
behaved ill to a girl. " My opinion is," answered he, " that 

Mr. B ought to marry Miss K . Our first duty is 

not to do evil (but, alas ! that is not possible) ; our second 
duty is to remedy it., if that be in our poxoer. The girl is his 
equal. If she were inferior to him, a sum of money and an 
allowance for the child might be something, — although, 
after all, a miserable compensation ; but, under the circum- 
stances, he ought to marry her. I will not have gay sedu- 
cers on my estate, nor grant my farmers a privilege I would 
not take myself of seducing other people^s daughters. I ex- 
pect, then, this Lothario to follow my example, and begin 
by restoi'ing the girl to society, or, by my father's beard, he 
shall hear of me." 

To this letter Moore justly adds: — "The reader must 
not pass lightly over this letter, for there is a vigor of moral 

* Moore, vol. i. p. 346. f See Gait, " Life of Lord Byron." 



310 Qualities and Virtues of Soul. 

sentimoit in it, expressed in such a plain, sincere manner, 
that it shows how full of health his heart was at bottom, 
even though it might have been scorched by passion." 

Lord Byron returned to his own country, after having 
spent tAVO years travelling in Sjiain, Portugal, and the East, 
in the study and contemplation requisite for maturing his 
genius. 

His distaste for all material objects of love or passion, 
and, in general, for sensual pleasures, was then remarked by 
all those who knew him intimately. 

'• An anchorite," says Moore, " who knew Lord Bja-on 
about this time, could not have desired for himself greater 
indifference toioard all the attractions of the senses, than Lord 
Byron showed at the age of twenty-three." 

And as on arriving in London he met with a complication 
of sorrows, he could, without any great effort, remain on 
his guai'd against all seductions. He did so in reality ; and 
Dallas assures us that, even when " Childe Harold " appear- 
ed, he still professed positive distaste for the society of wom- 
en. Whether this disposition arose from regret at the death 
of one he had loved, or was caused by the light conduct ot 
other women, it is certain that he did not seek their society 
then ; nay, even avoided them. 

" I have a favor to ask you," he wrote, during this sad 
time, to one of his young friends : " never speak to me in 
your letters of a woman ; make no allusion to the sex. I do 
not even wish to read a word about the feminine gender." 

And to this same friend he wrote in verse : — 

" If thou would'st hold 
Place in a heart that ne'er was cold, 
By all the powers that inen revere, 
By all unto thy bosom dear, 
Thy joys below, thy hopes above. 
Speak — speak of any thing but love." 

Neicstead Abbey, October 11, 1811. 

But if he did not seek after women, they came in quest of 
him. When he had achieved celebrity — when fame lit up 
his noble brow — the sex was dazzled. They did not wait 
to be sought, but themselves made the first advances. His 
table was literally strewn with expressions of feminine ad- 
miration. 



Qualities and Virtues of Soul. 311 

Dallas relates that one day he found Lord Byron so ab- 
sorbed in answering a letter that he seemed almost to have lost 
the consciousness of what was passing around him. 

" I went to see him again next day," says he, " and Lord 
Byron named the person to whom he had written. 

" While we were together, the jjage of the lady in ques- 
tion brought him a fresh letter. Apparently it was a young 
boy of thirteen or fourteen years of age, with a fresh, delicate 
face, that might have belonged to the lachj herself. "lie was 
dressed in a hussar jacket, and trowsers of scarlet, with sil- 
ver buttons and embroidery; curls of fair hair clustered over 
part of the forehead and cheeks, and he held in his hand a 
little cap with feathers, which completed the theatrical ap- 
pearance of this childish Pandarus. I could not help sus- 
pecting it was a disguise." 

The suspicions were Avell founded, and they caused Dal- 
las's hair to stand on end, for, added to his Pui-itanism, was 
the hope of becoming the young nobleman's Mentor, and he 
fancied he saw him already on the road to perdition. But 
Avas it likely that Lord Byron, with all his imagination, sen- 
sibility, and warm heart, should remain unmoved — neither 
touched noi' flattered by the advances of persons uniting 
beauty and wit to the highest rank '? The world talked, com- 
mented, exaggerated. Whether actuated by jealousy, ran- 
cor, noble or despicable sentiments, all took advantage of the 
occasion aflbrded for censure. 

Feminine overtures still continued to be made to Lord 
Byron, but the fumes of incense never hid from him the sight 
of his ideal. And as the comparison was not favorable to 
realities, disenchantment took place on his side, without a 
corresponding result on the other. Thexce many heart- 
breakings. Nevertheless there was no ill-nature, no indeli- 
cacy, none of those proceedings that the w^orld readily for- 
gives, but which his feelings as a man of honor would have 
condemned. Calantha, in despair at being no longer loved, 
resolved on vengeance. She invented a tale, but what does 
she say when the truth escapes her ? 

"If in his manners he (Glenarvon) had shown any of that 
freedona or wounding familiarity so frequent Avith men, she 
might, perhaps, have been alarmed, aifrighted. But what 



312 Qualities and Virtues of Soul. 

Avas it she would have fled from ? Certainly not gross adu- 
lation, nor those light, easy protestations to which all wom- 
en, sooner or later, are accustomed ; but, on the contrary, 
respect at once delicate and flattering ; attention that sought 
to gratify her smallest desires ; grace and gentleness that, 
not descending to be humble, were most fascinating, and such 
as are rarely to be met wnth," etc. 

Let us now reverse the picture, and pass from shade to 
light : the difference is striking. 

Passing in review his former life. Lord Byron said one 
day to Mr. Medwin : — " You may not compare me to Scipio, 
but I can assure you that I never seduced any woman.'''' 

No, certainly he did not pretend to rival Scipio ; his fault 
was, on the contrary, that he took pleasure in appearing tlie 
reverse. And yet Lord Byron often performed actions dur- 
ing his short life that Scipio himself might have euAded. 
x\nd who knows whether in any case Scijiio could have had 
the same merit ? — for, in order to attain that, he would have 
required to overcome such sensibility, imagination, and heart, 
as were possessed by Lord Byron. 

The single fact of being able to say, " I never seduced any 
woman," is a very great thing, and we may well doubt wheth- 
er many of his detractors could say as much. But let us re- 
late facts. 

Li London the mother of a beautiful girl, hard pressed for 
money, had recourse to Lord Byron for a large sum, making 
him an unnatural offer at the same time. The mother's de- 
pravity filled him with horror. Many.men in his place would 
have been satisfied Avith expressing this sentiment either in 
Avords or by silence. But that Avas not enough for his noble 
heart, and he subtracted from his pleasures or his necessities 
a sum sufficient to save the honor of the unfortunate girl. 
At another time, shortly before his marriage, a charming 
young person, full of talent, requiring help, through some ad- 
A'erse flimily circumstances, and attracted to Lord Byron by 
some presentiment of his generosity, became passionately in 
love with him. She could not live without his image before 
her. The history of her passion is quite a romance. Utterly 
absorbed by it, she Avas forever seeking pretexts for seeing 
him. A Avord, a sign, Avas all she required to become any 



Qualities and Viktues of Soul. 313 

thing ho wished. But Lord Byron, aware he could not make 
her happy and respectable, never allowed that word to pass 
his lips, and his language breathed only counsels of wisdom 
and virtue.* 

Even at Venice, when his heart had no preference, we 
iind him saving a young girl of noble birth from the danger 
caused by his involuntary fascinations.! In Romagna, at 
Pisa, in Greece, he also gave similar proofs of virtue and of 
his delicate sense of honor. 

Let us now examine his words. \\\ 1813, with regard to 
" The Monk," by Lewis, which he had just read, Lord By- 
ron wrote in his memoranda : — " These descriptions might be 
written by Tiberius, at Caprera. They are overdrawn ; the 
essence of vicious voluptuousness. As to me, I can not con- 
ceive how they could come from the pen of a man of twenty, 
for Lewis was only that age when he wrote ' The Monk.' 
These pages are not natural ; they distill cantharides. 

" I had never read this work, and have just been looking 
over it out of sheer curiosity, from a remembrance of the 
noise the book made, and the name it gave Lewis. But 
really such things can not even be dangerous." 

About the same period Mr. Allen, a friend of Lord Hol- 
land, very learned — a perfect Magliabecchi — a devourer of 
books, and an observer of mankind, lent Lord Byron a quan- 
tity of unpublished letters by the poet Burns — letters that 
were very unfit to see the light of day, being full of oatlis 
and obscene songs. After reading them, Lord Byron wrote 
in his memoranda : — 

" What an antithetical intelligence ! Tenderness and 
harshness, refinement and vulgarity, sentiment and sensual- 
ity ; now soaring up into ether, and then dragging along in 
mud. Mire and sublimity ; all that is strangely blended in 
this admixture of inspired dust. It may seem strange, but 
to me it appears that a true voluptuary should never aban- 
don his thought to the coarseness of reality. It is only by 
exalting whatever terrestrial, material, physical element there 
is in our pleasures, by veiling these ideas, or forgetting them 
quite, or, at least, by never boldly naming them to ourselves, 
only thus can we avoid disgust." 

* See chapter on " Generosity." f See '• Life in Italy." 

o 



314 Qualities and Yiktues of Soul. 

This is how Lord Byron understood voluptuousness. . We 
might multiply such quotations without end, taking them 
from every period of his life ; all would prove the same 
thing. 

As to his poetry written at this time, especially the lyr- 
ical pieces where he expresses his own sentiments, what can 
there be more chaste, more ethereal ? When a boy, he be- 
gins by consigning to the flames a whole edition of liis first 
jioems, on account of a single one, Avhich the Rev. Dr. Beech- 
er considered as expressing sentiments too warm for a young 
man. In his famous satire, written at twenty, he blames 
Moore's poetry for its eflfcminate and Epicurean tendencies, 
and he stigmatized as evil the whole poem of "The Auso- 
nian Nun," and all the sensualities contained in it. In his 
" Childe Harold," his Eastern tales, his lyric poems above 
all, where he displays the sentiments of his own heart, every 
thing is chaste and ethereal. The way in which the public 
appreciated these poems may be summed up in the words 
used by the Rev. Mr. Dallas — the living type of Puritanism 
in its most exaggerated form — at a date when, through 
many causes, Lord Byron no longer even enjoyed his good 
graces. 

"After 1816," says he (the time at which Lord Byron left 
England), " I had no more personal intercourse with him, but 
I continued to read his ncAV poems with the greatest pleasure 
until he brought out ' Don Juan.' That I i^erased with a real 
sorrow that no admiration could overcome. Until then his 
truly English muse had despised the licentious tone belong- 
ing to poets of low degree. But, in Avriting 'Don Juan,' he 
allied his chaste and noble genius with minds of that stamp." 

And then he adds, nevertheless, that into whatsoever er- 
ror Lord Byron fell, whatsoever his sin (on account of the be- 
ginning of "Don Juan "), he did not long continue to mix his 
pure gold with base metal, but ceased to sully his lyre by de- 
grees as he progressed with the poem. 

Whether Dallas be right or not in speaking thus of " Don 
Juan," we do not" wish here to examine. In quoting his 
words, my sole desire is to declare that, until the appearance 
of this poem. Lord Byron's muse had been, even for a Dal- 
las, the chaste muse of Albion. This avowal from such a 



Qualities and Virtues of Soul. 315 

man is worthy of note, and renders unnecessary any other 
quotation. 

We must not, however, pass over in silence Mr. Gait's very 
remarkable opinion on this subject : — 

" Certainly," says he, " there are some very fine composi- 
tions on love in Lord Byron's works, but there is not a single 
line among the thousand he wrote which shows a sexual sen- 
timent. With him, all breathes the purest voluptuousness. 
All is vague as regards love, and vnthout material passion y ex- 
cept in the delicious rhythm of his verses." 

And elsewhere be says : — 

" It is most singular that, with all his tender, passionate 
apostrophes to love. Lord Byron should not once have associ- 
ated it with sensual images. Not even in ' Don Juan,' where 
he has described voluptuous beauties Avith so much elegance." 

Then, quoting from " Hebrew Melodies," — 

She walks in Beauty. 

She walks in beauty, like the night 

Of cloudless climes and starry skies ; 
And all that's best of dark and bright 

Meet in her aspect and her eyes : 
Thus mellow'd to that tender light 

Which heaven to gaudy day denies. 

One shade the more, one ray the less, 

Had half impair'd the nameless grace 
Which waves in everv' raven tress, 

Or softly lightens o'er her face ; 
Where thoughts serenely sweet express 

How pure, how dear their dwelling-place. 

And on that cheek, and o'er that brow. 

So soft, so calm, j'et eloquent, 
The smiles that win, the tints that glow, 

But tell of days in goodness spent, 
A mind at peace with all below, 

A heart whose love is innocent! 

" Behold in these charming lines," continues Gait, " a per- 
fect sample of his ethereal adm,iration, his immaterial enthu- 
siasm. 

" The sentiment contained in this fine poetry," says he, 
" beyond all doubt belongs to the highest order of intellect- 
ual beauty ;" and it seemed proved to him that love, in Lord 
Byron, was rather a metaphysical conception than a sensual 



816 Qualities and Virtues of Soul. 

passion. He remarked that even when Lord Byron recalls 
the precocious feelings of his childhood toward liis little 
cousins — feelings so strong as to make him lose sleep, appe- 
tite, peace ; when he describes them, still unable to explain 
them — we feel that they were passions much more ethereal 
with him than with children in general. 

"It should be duly remarked," says Gait, " that there is not 
a single circumstance in his souvenirs which shows, despite 
the strength of their natural sympathy, the smallest influence 
of any particular attraction. He recollects well the color of 
her hair, the shade of her eyes, even the dress she wore, but 
he remembers his little Mary as if she were a Peri, a pure 
spirit ; and it does not appear that his torments and his wake- 
fulness haunted with the thought of his little cousin, were in 
any way produced by jealousy, or doubt, or fears, or any 
other consequence of passion." 

And when Gait speaks of " Tasso's Lament," he expresses 
the same opinion, namely, that in his writings Lord Byron 
treats of love as of a metaphysical conception, and that the 
fine verses he has put into the mouth of Tasso would still 
better become himself: — 

" It is no man-cl — from my very birth 
My soul was drunk wiih love, -vvliich did pervade 
And mingle with whate'er I saw on earth: 
Of objects all inanimate I made 
Idols, and out of wild and lonely flowers, 
And rocks, wliereby they grew, a Paradise, 
"Where I did lay me down within the shade 
Of waving trees, and dream'd uncounted hours." 

"The truth is," adds Gait, by Avay of conclusion, " that no 
poet has ever described love better than Lord Byron in that 
particular ethereal shade : — 

"'His love was passion's essence: — as a tree 

On fire by lightning, with ethereal flame 

Kindled he was, and blasted ; for to be 

Thus, and enamor'd, were in him the same. 

But his was not the love of living dame. 

Nor of the dead who rise upon our dreams, 

But of ideal beaut}', which became 

In him existence, and o'erflowing teems 
Along his burning page, distemper'd though it seems.' " 

" Childe Harold," canto iii. stanza 78. 

And even if it should be denied that love, in Lord Byron's 



Qualities and Virtues of Soul. 317 

writings, as indeed in himself, was purely metaphysical, it 
niust, at least, be acknowledged that it was chaste. This 
would be more easily recognizable if the letters dictated by 
his heart, if his love-letters, were known. But since we can 
not open these intimate treasures of his heart to the public, 
we will speak of those given us in his writings, and we will 
thence draw our conclusions: firstly, in regard' to the char- 
acters he gives to all his heroines ; secondly, as to the pictures 
he makes of love in passages Avhere he speaks seriously, and 
in his own name. 

LORD BYROn's female CHARACTERS. 

What poet of enei-gy has ever painted woman more chaste, 
more gentle and sweet, than Lord Byron ? 

" One of the distinguishing excellences of Lord Byron," 
says one of his best critics," is that which may be found in 
all his productions, whether romantic, classical, or fantastical, 
an intense sentiment of the loveliness of woman, and the 
faculty, not only of drawing individual forms, but likewise of 
infusing into the very atmosphere surrounding them, the es- 
sence of beauty and love. A soft roseate hue, that seems to 
jjenetrate down to the bottom of the soul, is spread overthem." 

More than any other genius. Lord Byron had the magic 
power of conjuring up before our imagination the ideal image 
of his subject. He was not at all perplexed how to clothe 
his ideas. That quality, so sought after by other writers, 
and so necessary for hiding faults, was quite natural to him. 
When he describes w^omen, a few rapid strokes suffice to en- 
grave an indelible image on the mind of the reader. Let us 
take for examples : — 

Leila, in the " Giaour." 

Zuleika,in the "Bride of Abydos." 

Medora, in the " Corsair." 

Theresa, in "Mazeppa." 

Haidee, in " Don Juan." 

Adah, in "Cain." 

The gentle Medora, ensconced within the solitary tower 
where she awaits her Conrad, is fully portrayed in the melan- 
choly song stealing on the strings of her guitar, and in the 
tender, chaste words with which she greets her lover. 



318 Qualities and Virtues of Soul. 

Zuleika, tlie lovely, innocent, and pure bride of Selim, lias 
her image graven in the following fine lines : — 

" Fair, as the first tliat fell of womankind, 

When on that dread yet lovely serpent smiling, 
Whose image then was st;imp'd upon her mind — 

But once beguiled — and evermore beguiling; 
Dazzling, as that, oh! too transcendent vision 

To Sorrow's phantom-peopled slumber given. 
When heart meets heart again in dreams Elysian, 

And paints the lost on Earth revived in Heaven ; 
Soft as the menioiy of buried love ; 
Pure, as the prayer which Childhood wafts above, 
Was she— the daughter of that rude old Chief, 
Who met the maid with tears — but not of giief. 

" Who hath not proved how freely words essay 
To fix one spark of Beauty's heavenly ray? 
Who doth not feel, until his failing sight 
Faints into dimness with its own delight. 
His changing cheek, his sinking heart confess 
The might, the majesty of Loveliness? 
Such was Zuleika, such around her shone 
The nameless charms unmark'd by her alone — 
Tlie light of love, the purity of grace, 
The mind, the JIusic breathing from her face, 
The heart whose softness harmonized the whole, 
And, oh ! that eye was in itself a Soul ! 

Her graceful arms in meekness bending 

Across her gently-budding breast ; 
At one kind word tliose arms extending 

To clasp the neck of him who blest 

ilis child, caressing and carest."* 



Theresa. 

Theresa's form — 
Methinks it glides before me now, 
Between me and yon chestnut's bough, 
The memory is so quick and warm ; 
And yet I find no words to tell 
The shape of her I loved so well ; 
She had the Asiatic eye. 

Such as our Turkish neighborhood 
Hath mingled with our Polish blood, 
Dark as above us is the sky; 



* The heroism of the young Zuleika, says Mr. G.Ellis in his criticism, is full 
of purity and loveliness. Never was a more perfect character traced with 
greater delicacj' and truth ; her piety, intelligence, her exquisite sentiment of 
dutvandlier unalterable love of truth seem born in her soul rather than acquired 
by education. She is ever natural, seductive, affectionate, and we must confess 
that her affection for Selim is well placed. 



Qualities and Viktues of Soul. 319 



But through it stole a tender light, 
Like tlie first moonrise of inidnight ; 
Large, dark, and swimming in the stream, 
"Wliich seem'd to melt to its own beam; 
All love, half languor, and half fire, 
Like saints that at the stake expire. 
And lift their raptured looks on high, 
As though it were a joy to die. 
A brow like a midsunnner lake, 

Transparent with the sun therein 
When waves no murmur dare to make. 

And heaven beholds her face within. 
A cheek and lip— but why proceed? 

I loved her then, I love her still ; 
And such as I am, love indeed 

In fierce extremes — in good and ill. 



Leila. 

Her eye's dark charm 'twere vain to tell, 
But gaze on that of the Gazelle, 
It will assist thy fancy well; 
As large, as languishingly dark, 
But Soul beam'd forth in eveiy spark 
Tliat darted from beneath the lid, 
Bright as the jewel of Giamschid. 
Yea, Soul, and should our Proiihet sa}' 
That form was naught but breathing clay, 
I>y Allah ! I would answer nay ; 
Thougli on Al-Sirat's arch I stood. 
Which totters o'er the fiery flood. 
With Paradise within irry view. 
And all his Ilouris beckoning through. 
Oh ! who young Leila's glance could read 
And keep that jiortion of his creed 
Which saith that woman is but dust, 
A soulless toy for tyrant's lust? 
On her might Muftis gaze, and own 
That through her eye the Immortal shone ; 
On her fair cheek's unfading hue 
The young pomegranate's blossoms strew 
Their bloom in blushes ever new; 
Her hair in hyacinthine flow, 
When left to roll its folds below. 
As midst her handmaids in the hall 
She stood superior to them all. 
Hath swept the marble where her feet 
Gleam'd whiter than the mountain sleet 
Ere from the cloud that gave it birth 
It fell, and caught one stain of earth. 
The cj'gnet nobly walks the water; 
So moved on earth Circassia's daughter — 



320 Qualities and Viktues of Soul. 

The loveliest bird of Franguestan ! 
As rears her crest the ruffled Swan, 

And spurns the waves with wings of pride, 
When pass the steps of stranger man 

Along the banks that bound her tide ; 
Thus rose fair Leila's whiter neck : — 
Thus arin'd witli beauty would she check 
Intrusion's glance, till Folly's gaze 
Shrunk from the charms it meant to praise. 
Thus high and graceful was her gait ; 
Her heart as tender to her mate; 
Her mate — stern Hassan, who was he ? 
Alas ! that name was not for thee ! 



ADAH. 

Adah is the wife of Cain. It is especially as the drama 
develops itself that Lord Byron brings out the full charm of 
Adah's beautiful nature — a nature at once primitive, tender, 
generous, and Biblical. 

Caix. 

Lucifer. Approach the things of earth most beautiful, 
And judge their beauty near. 

Cain. I "liave done this — 

The loveliest thing I know is loveliest nearest. 

Lucifer. What is that? 

4c 9|c 4: 4< 

Cain. My sister Adah. — All the stars of heaven, 
The deep blue noon of night, lit by an orb 
Which looks a spirit, or a spirit's world — 
The hues of twilight — the sun's gorgeous coming — 
His setting indescribable, which fills 
My eyes with pleasant tears as I behold 
Him sink, and feel my heart float softly with him 
Along that western paradise of clouds — 
The forest shade — the green bough — the bird's voice — 
The vesper bird's, which seems to sing of love. 
And mingles with tlie song of clierubim. 
As the day closes over Eden's walls : — 
All these are nothing, to mj' eyes and heart, 
Like Adah's face ; 1 turn from earth and heaven 
To gaze on it. 

Even those charming children of Nature, Haidee and 
Dudii, in " Don Juan," and the Neuha, in " The Island," 
scarcely meant to represent more than the visible material 
part of the ideal "U'oman he could love if he met with her — 
even these charming creatures possess not only the pagan 
beauty of form, but also Christian beauty, that of the soul : 
goodness, gentleness, tenderness. And it is also to be re- 



Qualities and Virtues of Soul. 321 

marked, that by degrees, as time wore on, Lord Byron's fe- 
male types rose in the moral scale, while still preserving their 
adorable charms, and their harmony with the state of civiliza- 
tion wherein he placed them. For instance, his Haidee, in 
the second canto of" Don Juan," written at Venice in 1818, 
is not worth, morally, the Haidee of the fourth canto, written 
at Ravenna in 1820. Beneath his pen at Ravenna, the adora- 
ble maiden evidently becomes spiritualized. This may be 
attributed to the poet's state of mind, for he was quite differ- 
ent at Ravenna to what he had been at Venice. The portrait 
of this lovely child is certainly very charming in 1818, but, 
while admiring her spotless Grecian brow, her beautiful hair, 
large Eastern eyes, and noble mouth, we can not help remark- 
ing something vague and undecided about her. And even 
in those fine verses where he says that Haidee's face belongs 
to a type inconceivable for human thought, and still more 
impossible of execution for mortal chisel, it is still the beauty 
of form that he shows you ; while the Haidee of Ravenna is 
quite spiritualized in all her exquisite beauty. 

After having described her as she appeared in her deli- 
cious Eastern costume. Lord Byron expresses himself in these 
terms : — 

" Her hair's long auburn waves down to her heel 
Flow'd like an alpine torrent, which the sun 

Dyes with his morning light, — and would conceal 
ller person if allow'd at large to run ; 

And still they seem'd resentfull}' to feel 

The silken fillet's curb, and sought to shun 

Their bonds, whene'er some Zephyr, caught, began 

To offer his young pinion as her fan. 

" Round her she made an atmosphere of life. 
The very air seem'd lighter from her ej'es, 

They were so soft and beautiful, and rife 
With all we can imagine of the skies, 

And pure as Psyche ere she grew a wife — 
Too pure even for the purest human ties ; 

Her overpowering presence made you feel 

It would not be idolatry to kneel." 

And, describing the whiteness of her skin, he says: — 

"Day ne'er will break 
On mountain-tops more heavenly white than her ; 
The eye might doubt of it were well awake, 
She was so like a vision." 
, O 2 



822 Qualities and Virtues of Soul. 

In tlie sixth cauto of " Don Juan " — the hero being in the 
midst of a harem — all his sympathies are for Dudii, a beautiful 
Circassian, who unites to all the charms, allthe moral quali- 
ties that a slave of the harem might possess. This is the por- 
trait which Lord Byron draws : — 



"A kind of sleepy Venus seem'd Dudu, 

Yet very fit to ' murder sleep ' in those 
Who gazed upon her cheek's transcendent hue, 
Her Attic forehead and her Phidian nose. 



* ' She was not violently lively, but 

Stole on your spirit like a May-day breaking. 



"Dudu, as has been said, was a sweet creature, 
Not very dashing, but extremely winning. 

With the most regulated charms of feature, 

Which painters can not catch like faces sinning 

Against proportion — the wild strokes of nature 
Which they hit oft' at once in the beginning, 

Full of expression, right or wrong, that strike, 

And, pleasing or unpleasing, still are like. 

l.TII. 

"But she Avas a soft landscape of mild earth. 

Where all was harmony, and calm, and quiet, 

Luxuriant, budding; cheerful without mirth, 

Which, if not happiness, is much more nigh it 

Than are your mighty passions and so forth, 

Which some call 'tlie sublime:' I wish tliey'd try it: 

I've seen your stormy seas and stormy women, 

And pity lovers rather more than seamen. 



"But she was pensive more than melancholy. 
And serious more than pensive, and serene. 

It may be, more than either : not unholj'^ 

Her thoughts, at least till now, appear to have been. 

The strangest thing was, beauteous, she was wholly 
Unconscious, albeit turn'd of quick seventeen. 

That she was fair, or da?^, or short, or tall ; 

She never thought about herself at all. 



"And therefore was she kind and gentle as 

The Age of Gold (when gold was yet unknown)." 

As to Neuha, the daughter of Ocean (in "The Island"), 
his last creation, she is, indeed, the daughter of Nature also. 



Qualities and Yirtues of Soul. 323 

and no less admirable than- her sister Haidee, but she is still 
more highly endowed in a moral sense: — 

. "The infant of an infant world, as pure 

From nature— lovely, warm, and premature ; 

Dusky. like niyht, but night with all her stars, 

Or cavern sparkling with its native spars ; 

With eyes that were a language and a spell, 

A form like Aphrodite's in her shell, 

With all her loves around her on the deep. 

Voluptuous as the first approach of sleep ; 

Yet full of life— for through her tropic cheek 

The blush would make its way, and all but speak : 

The sun-born blood suffused her neck, and threw 

O'er her clear nut-brown skin a lucid hue, , 

Like coral reddening through the darken'd wave, 

Which draws the diver to the crimson cave. 

Such was this daughter of the southern seas. 

Herself a billow in her energies. 

To bear the bark of others' happiness. 

Nor feel a sorrow till their joy grew less : 

Her wild and warm yet faithful bosom knew 

No joy like what it gave ; her hopes ne'er drew 

Aught from experience, that chill touchstone, whose 

Sad proof reduces all things from their hues : 

She fear'd no ill, because she kne.w it not." 

When, after the combat, she arrives in her bark to save 
Torquil, the poet exclaims : 

"And who the first that springing on the strand, 
Leap'd like a nercid from her shell to land. 
With dark but brilliant skin, and dewy eye 
Shining with love, and hope, and constancy ? 
Neuha — the fond, the faithful, the adored — 
Her heart on Torquil's like a torrent pour'd; 
And smiled, and wept, and near, and nearer clasp'd 
As if to be assured 'twas him she grasp'd ; 
Shuddered to see his j'ct warm wound, and then, 
To find it trivial, smiled and wept again. 
She was a warrior's daughter, and could bear 
Such sights, and feel, and mourn, but not despair. 
Her lover lived, — nor foes nor fears could blight. 
That full-blown moment in its all delight : 
Joy trickled in her tears, joy filled the sob 
That rock'd her heart till almost heard to throb; 
And paradise was breathing in the sigh 
Of nature's child in nature's ecstasy." 

" All thes-e sweet creations realize the idea, formed from 
all time, of surpassing loveliness, of gentleness with passion," 
justly observes Monsieur Nisard — he who, in his very clever 
sketch of the illustrious poet, so often forms erroneous judg- 



824 Qualities and Virtues of Soul. 

ments of Lord Byron. For he also accepted him as he was 
presented — namely, as the victim of calumny and prejudice ; 
or else he considered him after a system, examining only 
some 2^(issages and one single period of the man's and the 
poet''s life, instead of taking the whole career and the general 
spirit of his writings, — a method also perceivable in his ap- 
preciation of Lord Byron's female characters. 

Lideed Monsieur Nisard evidently only speaks of the Me- 
doras, Zuleikas, Leilas, and in general of all the types in his 
Eastern poems, and appertaining to his first period : most 
l;iscinating beings undoubtedly, true emanations of the pur- 
est and most passionate love, but yet as morally inferior to 
the Angiolinas, Myrrhas, Josephines, Auroras, as his poems 
of the first period are intellectually inferior to those of the 
second, beginning with the third canto of " Childe Harold," 
and as civilized Christian M'oman is superior to a woman in 
the harem. But Monsieur Nisard, who has a very system- 
matic way of judging things — wishing to prove that Lord By- 
ron's loves were quite lawless in their ungovernable strength, 
filling the whole soul to the absorption of every other senti- 
ment and interest (which might, indeed, perhaps he said of 
the personages in his Eastern poems), and not able, without 
contradicting himself, to assert the same as regards the love 
and devotion shown by the heroic Myrrhas and virtuous An- 
giolinas, and other dramatic types, all so different one from 
the other — has been obliged to omit all mention of them, 
thus sharing an error common to vain, ignorant critics. Yet 
these delightful creatures all resemble each other in the 
one faculty of loving passionately and chastely^ for that is 
a quality Avhich constitutes the very essence of woman, and 
Lord Byron's own qualities must always have drawn it 
out in her. But there is something far beyond beauty and 
passion in these noble and heroic creations of his second 
manner. 

" Where shall we find," says Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton, 
" a purer, higher character than that of Angiolina, in the 
' Doge of Venice ?' Among all Shakspeare's female characters 
there is certainly not one more true, and not only true and 
natural, which would be slight merit, but true as a type of 
the highest, rarest order in human nature. Let us stop here 



Qualities and Virtues of Soul. 325 

for a moincMit, we are on no common ground ; tlio character 
of Angiolina has not yet been understood." 

Bulwer then quotes the scene between Marian and Angi- 
olina, and after having pointed out its moral beauty, ex- 
claims : — 

" What a deep sentiment of the dignity of virtue ! An- 
giolina does not even conceive that she can be suspected, or 
that the insult offered her required any other justification 
than the indignation of public opinion." 

And Bulwer goes on to quote the verses where Marian 
asks Angiolina if, when she gave her hand to a man of age 
so disproportioned, and of a character so opposite to her own, 
she loved this spouse, this friend of her fiimily ; and wheth- 
er, before marriage, her heart had not beat for some noble 
youth more worthy to be the husband of beauty like hers ; 
or whether since, she had met Avith some one who might have 
aspired to her lovely self. And after Angiolina's admirable 
reply, Bulwer says : — 

" Is not this conception equal at least to that of Desde- 
mona ? Is not her heart equally pure, serene, tender, and at 
the same time passionate, yet with love, not material but 
actual, which, according to Plato, gives a visible form to vir- 
tue, and then admits of no other rival. Yet this sublime no- 
ble woman had no cold stiffness in her nature ; she forgives 
Steno, but not from the cold height of her chastity. 

" ' If,' said she to the indignant page, ' oh ! if this false and 
light calumniator were to shed his blood on account of this 
absurd calumny, never from that moment would my heart 
experience an hour's happiness, nor enjoy a tranquil slum- 
ber.'" 

" Here," says Bulwer, " the reader should remark with 
what delicate artifice the tenderness of sex and charity 
heighten and warm the snowy coldness of her ethereal supe- 
riority. What a union of all woman's finest qualities ! Pride 
that disdains calumny ; gentleness that forgives it ! Noth- 
ing can be more simply grand than the whole of this charac- 
ter, and the story which enhances it. An old man of eighty 
is the husband of a young woman, whose heart preserves the 
calmness of purity ; no love episode comes to disturb her 
serene course, no impure, dishonorable jealousy casts a shade 



826 Qualities and Virtues op Soul. 

on her bright name. Slie treads her path through a life of 
difficulties, like some angelic nature, though quite human by 
the form she wears." 

Wishing only to call attention to the beauty of the female 
characters he created, without reference to the other beauties 
contained in the work, we shall continue to quote Bulwer for 
the second of these admirable creations of womankind in his 
dramas, namely, Myrrha. After having praised that magnif- 
icent tragedy " Sardanapalus," he adds : — 

" But the principal beauty of this drama is the conception 
of Myrrha. This young Greek slave, so tender and coura- 
geous, in love with her lord and master, yet sighing after her 
liberty ; adoring equally her natal land and the gentle bar- 
barian : what a new and dramatic combination of sentiments ! 
It is in this conflict of emotions that the master's hand shows 
itself witli happiest triumph. 

" Tlie heroism of this beautiful Ionian never goes beyond 
nature, yet stops only at sublimest limits. The proud mel- 
ancholy that blends with her character, when she thinks of 
her fatherland ; her ardent, generous, unselfish love, her pas- 
sionate desire of elevating the soul of Sardanapalus, so as to 
justify her devotion to him, the earnest yet sweet severity 
that reigned over her gentlest qualities, showing her faithful 
and fearless, capable of sustaining with a firm hand the torch 
that was to consume on the sacred pile (according to her re- 
ligion) both Assyrian and Greek ; iill these combinations are 
the result of the purest sentiments, tJie noblest art. The last 
words of Myrrha on the funereal pyre are in good keeping 
with the grand conception of her character. With the natu- 
ral aspirations of a Greek, her thoughts turn at this moment 
to her distant clime ; but still tliey come back at the same 
time to her lord, who is beside her, and blending almost in one 
sigh the two contrary affections of her soul, Myrrha cries : — 

"Then farewell, thou eai*th ! 
And loveliest spot of earth ! fai'ewell, Ionia ! 
Be thou still free and beautiful, and far 
Aloof from desolation ! M}' last praj-er 
Was for thee, my last thoughts, save one, were of thee ! 
Sar. And that? 
» Myr. Is yours." 

"The principal charm," says Moore, " and the life-giving 



Qualities and Virtues of Soul. 327 

angel of this tragedy, is Myrrha, a beautiful, heroic, devoted, 
ethereal creature, enamored of the generous, infatuated mon- 
arch, yet ashamed of loving a barbarian, and using all her in- 
fluence over him to elevate as well as gild his life, and to arm 
liim against the terror of his end. Her voluptuousness is 
that of the heart, her heroism that of the affections." 

Another admirable character, full of Christian beauty, is 
that of Josephine in " Werner." 

" Josephine," said the " Review," when " "Werner " appear- 
ed, " is a model of real spotless virtue. A true woman in 
her perfection, not only does she preserve the character of 
lier sex by her general integrity, but she also possesses a wife's 
tender, sweet, and constant affection. She cherishes and con- 
soles her afflicted husband through all the adversities of liis 
destiny and the consequences of his faults. 

" Italian by birth, the contrast between the beauties and 
circumstances of her native country compared with the front- 
iers of Silesia, where a pretty feudal tyranny exists, disj)lays 
still more the fine sentiments that characterize her." 

We shall close this long list of admirable conceptions 
(which one quits with regret, so great is their charm) by giv- 
ing some extracts from the portrait he was engaged on, when 
death, alas ! caused the pencil to drop from his fingers : we 
mean Aurora Raby in " Don Juan :" — 

"Aurora Eaby, a j'oung star who shone 

O'er life, too sweet an image for such glass; 
A lovely being, scarcely form'd or moulded, 
A rose with all its sweetest leaves yet folded; 

*' Early in j^ears, and yet more infantine 

In figure, she had something of sublime 
In eyes which sadly shone, as seraphs' shine. 

All youth — but with an aspect beyond time ; 
Radiant and grave as pitying man's decline ; 

Mournful — but mournful of another's crime, 
She look'd as if she sat by Eden's door, 
And grieved for those who could return no more." 

And then : — 

" She was a Catholic, too, sincere, austere. 
As far as her own gentle heart allow'd." 

And again : — 

" She gazed upon a world she scarcely knew. 
As seeking not to know it; silent, lone. 



328 Qualities and Virtues of Soul. 

As grows a flower, thus quietly she grew, 
And kept her heart serene within its zone. 

There was awe in the honiaye whicli she drew : 
Her spirit seem'd as seated on a throne 

Apart from the surrounding world, and strong 

In its own strength — most strange in one so young !" 

* :!e * * * ¥ 

"High, yet resembling not his lost Haidee; 
Yet each was radiant in her proper sphere." 

''The difference in them 
Was such as lies between a flower and gem." 

" Don Juan,''' canto xv. 

Now tliat we have seen Lord Byron's ideal of Avomankind, 
let us mark with what sentiments they inspired him, and in 
what way love always presented itself to his heart or his 
imagination. Ever dealing out toward him the same meas- 
ttre of justice and truth, people have gone on complacently 
repeating that his love sometimes became a very frenzy, or 
anon degenerated into a sensation ra»ther than a sentiment. 
And his poetry has been asserted to contain proof of this 
in the actions, characters, and words of the persons there 
portrayed. I think, then, that the best way of ascertain- 
ing the degree of truth belonging to these asseverations, is 
to let him speak himself, on this sentiment, at all the diifer- 
ent periods of his life : — 

"Yes, Love indeed is light from heaven; 

A spark of that immortal fire 
With angels shared, by Allah gi%'en 

To lift from earth our low desire. 
Devotion wafts the mind above. 
But Heaven itself descends in love ; 
A feeling from the Godhead caught, 
To wean from self each sordid thought: 
A IJay of Him who form'd the whole; 
A Glorj' circling round the soul ! 
I grant my love imperfect, all 
That mortals by the name miscall ; 
Then deem it evil, what thou wilt; 
But say, oh saj', hers was not guilt ! 
Slie was mj' life's unerring light: 
That quench'd, what beam shall break my niglit.'" 

" The Giaour.'" 

In 1817, at Venice, when his heart, at twenty-nine years 
of age, was devoid of any real love, and had even arrived at 



1! 



.Qualities and Virtues of Soul. 329 

never loving, although suffering deeply from the void thus 
created, Lord Byron giving vent to his feelings wrote thus : — 

"Oh! that the Desert were my dwelling-place, 
With one fair Spirit for my minister, 
That I might all forget the human race, 
And, hating no one, love but only her ! 
Ye elements ! — in whose ennobling slir 
I feel myself exalted — Can ye not 
Accord me such a being? Do I err 
In deeming such inhabit many a spot? 
Though with them to converse can rarely be our lot."* 

At the same period, he also unveils his soul, in guessing 
that of Tasso : — 

" And with my j'ears mj' soul began to pant 
With feelings of strange tumult and soft pain ; 
And the whole heart exhaled into One Want, 
But undefined and wandering, till the day 
I found the thing I sought — and that was thee ; 
And then I lost my being, all to be 
Absorb'd in thine; the world was pass'd away; 
Thou didst annihilate the earth to me!" 

" The Lament ofTasso.^' 

A short time after, having described the charm of the pine 
forest at Ravenna, seen by twilight, he begins to paint the 
happiness of two loving hearts — of Juan and Haidee, and 

says :— 

VIII. 

'• Young Juan and his lady-love were left 

To their own hearts' most sweet society; 
Even Time the pitiless in sorrow cleft 

With his rude scythe such gentle bosoms. 
H! * * * * * 

They could not be 
Meant to grow old, but die in happy spring, 
Before one charm or hope had taken wing. 

IX. 

" Their faces were not made for wrinkles, their 

Pure blood to stagnate, their great hearts to fail ! 

The blank gray was not made to blast their hair, 
But like the climes that know nor snow nor hail. 

The}' were all summer; lightning might assail 
And shiver them to ashes, but to trail 

A long and snake-like life of dull decay 

Was not for them — thev had too little clav. 



* "Childe Harold," canto iv. stanza 177. 



330 Qualities and Virtues of Soul. 



' They were alone once more ; for them to be 
Thus was another Eden ; thej' were never 

AVear}', unless when separate: the tree 

Cut from its forest root of years — the river 

Damn'd from its fountain — the child from the knee 
And breast maternal wean'd at once forever, — 

Would wither less than these two torn apart ; 

Alas! there is no instinct like the heart. 



'""Whom the gods love die j'oung,' was said of yore, 
And many deaths do they escape by this: 

The death of friends, and that which slays even more — 
The death of friendship, love, youth, all that is, 

Except mere breath; 

****** 

Perhaps the early grave 
Which men weep over, may be meant to save. 



"Haidee and Juan thought not of the dead. 

The heavens, and earth, and air, seem'd made for them ; 
Tliey found no fault with Time, save that he fled; 

They saw not in tliemselves aught to condemn ; 
Each was the otlier's mirror. 



'Moons changing had roll'd on, and changeless found 
Tliose their bright rise had lighted to such joys 

As rarely they beheld throughout their round ; 

And these were not of the vain kind which cloys, 

For theirs were buoj'ant spirits, never bound 
By the mere senses ; and that which destroys 

Most love, possession, unto them appear'd 

A thing which each endearment more endear'd. 



"Oh beautiful! and rare as beautiful! 

But theirs was love in which the mind delights 
To lose itself, when the old world grows dull. 

And we are sick of its hack sounds and sights. 
Intrigues, adventures of the common school. 
Its pettj' passions, marriages, and flights. 
Where Hymen's torch but brands one strumpet more, 
Whose husband only knows her not a wh — re. 



• Hard words ; harsh truth ; a truth which manj' know. 

Enough. — The faithful and the fairy pair. 
Who never found a single hour too slow. 

What was it made them thus exempt from care ? 



Qualities and Virtues of Soul. 331 

Young innate feelings all have felt below, 

Which perish in the rest, but in them were 
Inherent; what we mortals call romantic, 
And always envy, though we deem it frantic. 

XIX. 

"This is in others a factitious state, 

^ * * * * * 

But was in them their nature or their fate. 



"They gazed upon the sunset: 'tis an hour 

Dear unto all, but dearest to their eyes, 
For it had made theni what they were : the power 

Of love had first o'erwhelm'd them from such skies. 
When happiness had been their onh' dower. 

And twilight saw them link'd in passion's ties ; 
Charm'd with each other, all things charm'd that brought 
The past still welcome as the present thought. 



"Juan and Haidee gazed Upon each other 

With swimming looks of speechless tenderness, 

Which mix'd all feelings, friend, child, lover, brother ; 
All that the best can mingle and express 

When two pure hearts are pour'd in one another, 
And love too much, and yet can not love less ; 

But almost sanctify the sweet excess 

By the immortal wish and power to bless. 



" Mix'd in each other's arms, and heart in heart, 

Why did they not then die ? — they had lived too long 
Should an hour come to bid them breathe apart ; 

Years could but bring them cruel things or wrong." 

'■^ Doit Juan" canto iv. 

It Avas this love which caused Campbell the poet to say : 
" If the love of Juan and Haidee is not pure and innocent, 
and expressed with delicacy and propriety, then may we at 
once condemn and blot out this tender passion of the soul 
from the list of a poet's themes. Tlien must we shut our eyes 
and harden our hearts against that passion which sways our 
Avhole existence, and quite become mere creatures of hypoc- 
risy and formality, and accuse Milton himself of madness." 

At Ravenna, where Lord Byron composed so many sub- 
lime works, he also wrote "Sardanapalus " and " Heaven and 
Earth." He was then thirty-two years of age. The love 
predominating in these two dramas is that which swayed 



832 Qualities and Virtues of Soul. 

his own soul, the same sentiment which, a year later, also in- 
spired the beautiful jjoem composed on his Avay from Raven- 
na to Pisa. 

No quotation could convey an idea of the noble energetic 
feeling animating these two dramas, for adequate language 
is wanting ; impervious to words, the sentiment they con- 
tain is like a S2:)irit pervading, or a ray of light warming and 
illuminating them. 

They require to be read throughout. I prefer to quote 
his words on love, in the 16th canto of "Don Juan," and in 
" The Island," because they are the last traced by his pen. 
Written a few days previous to his fatal departure for Greece, 
it can not be doubted that the sentiment which dictated them, 
was the same that accompanied him to his last hour. 



"And certainly Aurora liail renew'd 

In him some feelings he had lately' lost, 
Or harden'd ; feelings which, perhaps ideal, 
Are so divine, that I must deem them real: — 



"The love of higher things and better days; 

The unbounded hope, and heavenly ignorance 
Of what is call'd the world, and the world's ways ; 

The moments when we gather from a glance 
More joy than from all future pride or praise. 

Which kindle manhood, but can ne'er entrance 
The heart in an existence of its own, 
Of which another's bosom is the zone."* 

And then, in describing the happiness of two lovers, in 
his poem of "The Island," a few days before setting out for 
Greece, he says again : — 

" Like martyrs revel in their funeral pyre, 
With such devotion to their ecstasy, 
That life knows no such rapture as to die ; 
And die thcj' do ; for earthly life has naught 
Match'd with that burst of nature, even in thought ; 
And all our dreams of better life above 
But close in one eternal gush of love." 

After speaking of the religious enthusiast, and saying that 
his soul pi'eceded his dust to heaven, he adds : — 

* See " Don Juan," canto xvi. 



Qualities and Vietues of Soul. 883 

"Is love less potent? No — his path is trod, 
Alike upliltecl gloriously to God ; 
Or liiik'd to all we know of heaven below, 
The other Letter self, whose joy or woe 
Is more than ours." 

But enough of quotations ; and now Avliat poet has ever 
written or spoken of love with words and images more chaste, 
move truly Avelling from his own heart ? We feel that he 
has given us the key to that. And if, after all these demon- 
strations, there still remain any readers who continue to ac- 
cept as true the pleasantries, satires, and mystifications con- 
tained in some of his verses, I do not pretend to write for 
them. They are to be pitied, but there is no hope of con- 
vincing them. That depends on their quality of mind. The 
only thing possible, then, is to recall some of those anecdotes 
Avhich, while justifying them in a measure, yet at the same 
time illustrate Lord Byron's Avay of acting. I will select 
one. When Lord Byron Avas at Pisa a friend of Shelley's, 
whom he sometimes saw, had formed a close intimacy with 

Lady B , a Avoman of middle-age but of high birth. The 

tie betAveen them Avas evidently the result of Aanity on Mr, 

M 's side, and, as she Avas the mother of a large family, 

it Avas doubly imperative on her to be respectable. But that 

did not prcA^ent Mr. M from boasting of his success, and 

even (that he might be believed) from going into disgusting 
details in his eagerness for praise. 

One day that Mr. M Avas in the same salon (at Mrs. 

Sh 's house) Avith Lord Byron and the Countess G , 

the conA'ersation turned upon women and loA^e in general, 

Avhereupon Mr. M lauded to the skies the devotedness, 

constancy, and truth of the sex. When he had finished his 
sentimental " tirade," Lord Byron took up the opposite side, 
going on as Don Juan or Childe Harold might. It Avas easy 
to see he Avas playing a part, and that his words, partly in 
jest, partly ironical, did not express his thoughts. NcA'er- 

theless they gave pain to Mme. G , and, as soon as they 

Avere alone. Lord Byron having asked her why she was sad, 
she told him the cause^ 

" I am very sorry to haA^e grieved you," said he, " but hoAV 
could you think that I Avas talking seriously ?" 

"I did not think it," she said, "but those A\dio do not 



334 Qualities and Virtues of Soul. 

know you will believe all ; M will not fail to repeat 

your words as if they were your real opinions ; and the 
world, knowing neither him nor you, will remain convinced 
that he is a man full of noble sentiments, and you a real Don 
Juan, not indeed your own charming youth, but Moliere's 
Don Juan !" 

" Very probably," said Lord Byron ; " and that will bo 

another true page to add to M 's note-book. I can't help 

it. I couldn't resist the temptation of punishing M for 

his vanity. All those eulogiuras and sentimentalities about 
women were to make us believe how charming tliey had al- 
ways been toAvard him, how they had always appreciated 
his merits, and how passionately in love with him Lady 

B is now. My words Avere meant to throw water on 

his imaginary fire." 

Alas ! it was on such false appearances that they made 
up, then and since, the Lord Byron still believed in by the 
generality of persons. 

Lord Byron by his marriage gave another pledge of hav- 
ing renounced the foibles of the heart and the allurements; 
of the senses ; and it is very certain that he redeemed his 
Avord. If, through susceptibility or any other defect, Lady 
Byron, going back to the Y>^st or trusting to vile, revenge- 
ful, and interested spies, did not know hoAV to understand 
him, all Lord Byron's friends did, whether or not they dared 
to say so. And he himself, Aviio never could tell a lie, has 
assured us of his married fidelity.* His life in SAvitzerland 
Avas devoted to study, retreat, and eA'en austerity. How lit- 
tle this stood him in stead with his enemies is Avell knoAvn. 
" I never lived in a more edifying manner than at Geneva,'* 
lie said to Mr, Medwin. "My reputation has not gained by 
it, NcA-ertheless, AAdien there is mortification, there ought 
to be a reward."! 

Wlien he arriA'ed at Milan many ladies belonging to the 
great Avorld Avere most anxious to know him ; these presenta- 
tions Avere proposed to him, and he refused. As to his life 
at Venice, a Avicked sort of romance Jias been made of it, by 
exaggerating most ordinary things, and heaping invention 
upon invention ; but this has been explained Avitli sufficient 

* See chapter on Marriage. f Medwin, p. 13. 



Qualities and Virtues of Soul. 335 

detail in another chapter, where all the difierent causes of 
these exaggerations have been shown in their just measure 
of truth.* 

Here, then, I will only say, that if, on arriving at Venice, 
he relaxed his austerity to lead the life common to young 
men without legitimate ties: if, under the influence of that 
lovely sky, he did not remain insensible to the songs of tlie 
beautiful Adriatic siren, nor trample under foot the few 
flowers fate scattered on his path, to make amends perhaps 
for the thorns that had so long beset it ; if he sometimes ac- 
cepted distractions in the form of light pleasures, as well as 
in the form of study,f did he not likewise always impose 
liard laborious occupation upon his mind, thus chaining it 
to beautiful immaterial things ? Did his intellectual activity 
slacken ? Was his soul less energetic, les's sublime ? The 
works of genius that issued from his pen at Venice are a 
suflicient reply, " Manfred," conceived on the summit of 
the Alps, was written at Venice ; the fourth canto of " Childe 
Harold " was conceived and written at Venice. The " La- 
ment of Tasso," " Mazeppa," the " Ode to Venice," " Beppo " 
(from his studies of Berni), the first two cantos of "Don 
Juan," were all written at Venice. 

Moreover, it was there he collected materials for his dra- 
mas ; there he studied the Armenian language, making sufli- 
cient progress to translate St. Paul's Epistles into English. 
And all that, in less than twenty-six months, including his 
journeys to Home and to Florence. Let moralists say wheth- 
er a man steeped in sensual pleasures could have done all 
that, 

" The truth is," says Moore, " that, so far from the strength 
of his intellect being impaired or dissijjated by these irregu- 
larities, it never was perhaps at any period of his life more 
than at Venice in full possession of all its energies. "J 

All the concessions Moore was obliged to make, from a 
sort of weakness, not to compromise his position, to certain 
extreme opinions in politics or religion, cloaking in reality 
personal hatred ; are they not all destroyed by this single 
avowal ? 

Shelley, who came to Venice to see Lord Byron, said that 

* See "Life in Italj-." f Ibid. J Moore, vol. ii. p. 182. 



336 Qualities and Virtues of Soul. 

all ho observed of Lord Byron's state during his visit gave 
him a much higher idea of his intellectual grandeur than 
what he had noticed before. Then it was, and under this im- 
pression, that Shelley sketched almost the whole poem of 
"Julian and Maddalo." " It is in this latter character," says 
Moore, " that he has so picturesquely personated his noble 
friend ; his allusions to the ' Swan of Albion,' in the verses 
written on the Engancennes hills, are also the result of this 
fit of enthusiastic admiration." At Venice Lord Byron saw 
few English ; but those he did see, and who have spoken of 
him, have expressed themselves in the same way as Shelley ; 
which caused Gait to say, that even at Venice, with regard 
to his pleasures, his conduct had been that of most young 
men ! but that the whole difference must have consisted in 
the extravagant delight he took in exaggerating, through his 
conversation, not what was conducive to honor, but, on the 
contrary, what was likely to do him harm. The whole differ- 
ence, however, does not lie here, but rather in the indiscre- 
tion shown by some friends.* Among the best testimonies 
borne to his way of living at Venice we must not forget that 
of Iloppuer, Avho bore so high a character, and who Avas the 
constant companion of his daily afternoon walks ; nor that 
of the excellent Father Pascal, who shared his morning stud- 
ies at the Armenian convent. f 

But in this united homage to truth I can not pass over in 
silence nor refrain from quoting the words of a very great 
mind, who, under the veil of fiction, has written almost a biog- 
raphy of Lord Byron, and who too independent, though a 
Tory, io loish to conceal his thought, has declared in the pref- 
ace to his charming work of "Venetia " that Lord Byron Avas 
really his hero. 

This writer, after speaking of all the silly calumnies Avitli 
which Lord Byron was overwhelmed at one time, says of tlie 
two more especially calculated to stir up opinion against him, 
those which accused him of libertmisjn and atheism : — 

" A calm inquirer might, perhaps, have suspected that 
abandoned profligacy is not very compatible with severe 
study, and that an author is seldom loose in his life, even if 
he be licentious in his Avritings. A calm inquirer might, per- 

* Sec " Life in Italy," at Venice. f See " Life in Italy." 



Qualities and Virtues of Soul. 337 

Imps, have been of opinion that a solitary sage may be the 
antagonist of a priesthood without absolutely denying the 
existence of a God ; but there never are calm inquirers. The 
world, on every subject, however unequally, is divided into 
parties ; and even in the case of Herbert (Lord Byron) and 
his writings, those who admired his genius and the generosity 
of his soul were not content with advocating, principally out 
of pique to his adversaries, his extreme opinions on every sul)- 
ject — moral, political, and religious. Besides, it must be con- 
fessed, there was another circumstance almost as fatal to 
Herbert's character in England as his loose and heretical 
opinions. The travelling English, during their visits to Ge- 
neva, found out that their countryman solaced or enlivened 
his solitude by unhallowed ties. It is a habit to which very 
young men, who are separated from or deserted by their 
wives, occasionally have recourse. Wrong, no doubt, as most 
things are, but, it is to be hoped, venial ; at least in the case 
of any man who is not also an atheist. This unfortunate mis- 
tress of Herbert Avas magnified into a seraglio; extraordinary 
tales of the voluptuous life of one who generally at his stud- 
ies outmatched the stars, were rife in English society; and 

'Hoaiy marquises and stripling dukes,' 

Avho were either jyrotecting opera-dancers, or, still worse, malc- 
ing love to their neighhori wives, either looked grave when 
the name of Herbert (Lord Byron) was mentioned in female 
society, or affectedly confused, as if they could a tale un- 
fold, if they wei'e not convinced, that the sense of propriety 
among all present was infinitely superior to their sense of 
curiosity." 

Li addition to all the proofs given by the varied uses 
Lord Byron made of his intellect we must not omit those 
furnished by the state of his heart. If, too readily yielding 
at Venice to momentary and fleeting attractions. Lord Byron 
had been led to squander the powers of youth, to wish to 
extinguish his senses in order to open out a more vast hori- 
zon to his intelligence ; if, thus mistaking the means, he had, 
nevertheless, weakened, enervated, degraded himself, would 
not his heax't have been the first victim sacrificed on the al- 
tar of light pleasures ? 



oo8 Qualities and Virtues of Soul. 

But, on the contrary, this heart which he had never suc- 
ceeded in hilling into more than a slumber, when the hour of 
awakening came, held dominion by its own- natural energy 
over the proud aspirations of his intelligence, and found both 
his youth and faculty of loving unweakened, and that he 
liad a love capable of every sacrifice, a love as fresh as in his 
very spring-tide. 

Are such metamorphoses possible to withered souls ? 
Moralists have never met with a like i^henomenon. On the 
contrary, they certify that in hearts withered by the enjoy- 
ments of sense all generous feelings, all noble aspirations be- 
come extinct. 

If Lord Byron's anti-sensuality were not sufficiently 
proved by his actions, words, wi'itings, and by the undenia- 
ble testimony of those who knew him, it might still be abund- 
antly proved by his habits of life, and all his tastes ; to be- 
gin Avith his sobriety, which really Avas wonderful. So mucli 
so, that if the i^roverb, Tell rae what you eat, and I vnll tell 
you what you are, be true, and founded on psychological ob- 
servation, one must admit that Lord Byron was almost an 
immaterial being. 

His fine health, his strong and vigorous constitution, lead 
to tlie presumption that, at least in childhood and during his 
boyish days, his rule of life could not have differed from that 
of the class to which he belonged. Nevertheless, his sobri- 
ety was remarkable even in early youth ; at eighteen he went 
with a friend, Mr. Pigott, to Tunbridge Wells, and this gen- 
tleman says, " We retired to our own rooms directly after 
dinner, for Byron did not care for drinking any more than 
myself" 

But this natural sobriety became soon after the sobriety 
of an anchorite, which lasted more or less all his life, and 
was a perfect phenomenon. Not that he was insensible to 
the pleasures of good living, and still less did he act from any 
vanity (as has been said by some incapable of sacrificing the 
bodily appetites to the soul) ; his conduct proceeded from 
the desire and resolution of making matter subservient to 
the spirit. 

His rule of life was already in full force when he left En- 
gland for the first time. Mr. Gait, whom chance associated 



Qualities and Virtues of Soul. 339 

with Lord Byron on board the same vessel bound from Gib- 
raltar to Malta, affirms that Lord Byron, during the whole 
voyage, seldom tasted wine ; and that, when he did occasion- 
ally take some, it was never more than half a glass mixed 
with water. He ate but little, and never any meat ; only 
bread and vegetables. He made me think of the ghoul tak- 
ing rice with a needle," 

On board " La Salsette," returning from Constantinople, 
he himself wrote to his friend and preceptor Drury, that the 
gnats which devoured the delicate body of Hobhouse had not 
much effect on him, because he lived in a moi'e sober man- 
ner. 

As to his mode of living during his two years' absence 
from England we can say nothing, except that he lived in 
climates where sobriety is the rule, and that his letters ex- 
pressed jn-ofound disgust at the complaints, exacting tone, 
and effeminate tastes of his servants, and his own preference 
for a inonastic mode of life, and very probaLly also for mo- 
nastic diet. The testimony to his extraordinary sobriety be- 
comes unanimous as soon as he returns home. 

Dallas, who saw him immediately on his landing in 1811, 
writes : — 

" Lord Byron has adopted a mode of diet that any one 
else would have called dying of hunger, and to which several 
persons even attributed his lowness of sj^irits. He lived sim- 
l^ly on small sea-biscuits, very thin ; only eating two of these, 
and often but one, a day, with one cup oi green fe«, which he 
generally drank at one in the afternoon. He assured me that 
was all the nourishment he took during the twenty-four 
hours, and tliat, so far from this regime affecting his spirits, 
it made him feel lighter and more lively ; and, in short, gave 
him greater cominand over himself in all respects. Tliis great 

abstinence is almost incredible He thought great eaters 

were generally prone to anger ^ and stiqmV"^ 

It was about this time that he made the personal ac- 
quaintance of Moore at a dinner given by Rogers for the pur- 
pose of bringing them together and of reconciling them. 

"As none of us," says Moore, " knew about his singular 
regime, our host Avas not a little embarrassed on discovering, 

* Dallas, 1,1. 



340 Qualities and Virtues of Soul. 

that there was nothing on the table which his noble guest 
could eat or drink. Lord Byron did not touch meat, fish, or 
wine ; and as to the biscuits and soda-water he asked for, 
there were, unfortunately, none in the house. He declared 
he was equally pleased with potatoes and vinegar, and on 
this meagre pittance he succeeded in making an agreeable 
dinner."* 

About the same time, being questioned by one of his 
friends, who liked good living, as to Avhat sort of table they 
had at the Alfred Club, to which he belonged, " It is not 
worth much," answered Lord Byron. " I speak from hear- 
say ; for what does cookery signify to a vegetable-eater ? 
But there are books and quiet ; so, for what I care, they may 
serve up their dishes as they like." 

" Frequently," says Moore again, " during the first part of 
our acquaintance we dined together alone, either at St. Al- 
ban's, or at his old asylum, Stevens's. Although occasional- 
ly he consented to take a little Bordeaux, he always held to 
his system of ahstaining from meat. He seemed truly per- 
suaded that animal food must have some particular influence 
on character. And I remember one day being seated opposite 
to him, engaged in eating a beefsteak Avith good appetite, 
that, after having looked at me attentively for several sec- 
onds, he said, gravely, ' Moore, does not this eating beefsteaks 
make you ferocious?' 

"Among the numerous hours we passed together this 
spring, I remember particularly his extreme gayety one even- 
ing on returning from a soiree, when, after having accom- 
panied Rogers home. Lord Byron — who, according to his 
frequent custom, had not dined the last two «days — feel- 
ing his appetite no longer governable, asked for something 
to eat. Our repast, at his choice, consisted only of bread 
and cheese ; but I have rarely made a gayer meal in my 
life." 

In 1814 he relaxed his diet a little, so far as to eat fish 
now and then ; but he considered this an excessive indul- 
gence. " I have made a regular dinner for the first time 
since Sunday," he wi'ites in his journal. " Every other day 
tea and six dry biscuits. This dinner makes me heavy, stu- 

* Moore, 315. 



Qualities and Virtues of Soul. 341 

pid, gives me horrible dreams (nevertheless, it only consisted 
of a pint of Bucellas and iish ; I do not touch meat, and take 
but little vegetable). I wish I were in the country for exer- 
cise, instead of refreshing myself with abstinence. I am not 
afraid of a slight addition of flesh; my hones can well sup- 
port that ! hut the icorst of it is, that the devil arrives loith 
plumpness, and I must drive him aioay through hunger ! I 

DO NOT WISH TO BE THE SLAVE OF MY APPETITE. If I fall, 

my heart at least shall herald the race."* 

Except the last phrase, which is more worldly or more lui- 
man, might not one fancy one's self listening to the confes- 
sion or soliloquy of some Christian philosopher of the fourth 
century: one of those Avho sought the Theban deserts to 
measure their strength of soul and body in desperate strug- 
gles with Nature ; the confession of a Hilarion or a Jerome, 
rather than that of a young man of twenty-three, brought 
up amid the conveniences and luxuries surrounding the aris- 
tocracy of the most aristocratic country in the world, Avhere 
material comfort is best appreciated ? 

Thus it was, nevertheless, that Lord Byron practiced epi- 
cureanism with regard to his food, making very rare excep- 
tions when he consented to dine out. 

If time, change of circumstances, and climate, caused some 
slight modifications in his manner of living, his mode of life 
did not vary. At Venice, Ravenna, and Genoa, this epicu- 
rean would never suffer meat on his table ; and he only made 
some rax'e exceptions, to avoid too much singularity, at Pisa, 
where he invited, some friends to dinner. Count Gamba, 
after having spoken of the sobriety of his regimen on board 
the vessel that took him to Greece, the Ionian Islands, and 
finally to Missolonghi, says, " He ate nothing but vegetables 
and fish, and drank only water. Our fear was," says he, 
" lest this excessive abstinence should be injurious to his 
health !" 

Alas ! we knoAv that it was. It is certain that this debili- 
tating regime, joined to such strong moral impressions-, too 
strongly felt, undermined Lord Byron's fine constitution, 
which had only resisted so long through its extreme vigor 
and the rare purity of his blood. 

* Moore, first vol. 



342 Qualities and Virtues of Soul. 

The bodily exercise he took had the same object, and fur- 
ther added to the injurious eflect of his obstinate fasts. "I 
have not left my room these four days past," he writes in his 
memorandum, April, 1814, at a moment when his heart was 
agitated by a passion ; " but I have been fencing with Jackson 
an hour a day by way of exercise, so as to get matter tmder, 
and give sway to the ethereal part of mg nature. The more 
I fatigue myself, the better my mind is for the rest of the day ; 
and then my evenings acquire that calm, that prostration and 
languor, that are such a happiness to me. To-day I fenced 
for an hour, wrote an ode to Napoleon Bonaparte, copied it 
out, ate six biscuits, drank four bottles of soda-water, read 
the rest of the time, and then gave a load of advice to poor 

H about his mistress, who torments him intolerably, 

enough to make him consumptive. Ah ! to be sui-e, it suits 

me well to be giving lessons to ; it is true they are 

thrown to the winds."* 

This desire of giving mind dominion over mattei*is shown 
equally in all his tastes, all his preferences. Beauty in art 
consisted wholly for him in th5 expression of heart and soul. 
He had a horror of realism in art ; the Flemish school inspired 
him with a sort of nausea. Certain material points of beauty 
in women, that are generally admired, had no beauty for him. 
The music he liked, and of which he never grew tired, was 
not brilliant or difficult, but simple ; that which awakens the 
most delicate sentiments of the soul, which brings tears to' 
the eye. 

" I have known few persons," says Moore, " more alive 
than he to the charms of simple music; and I have often 
seen tears in -his eyes when listening to the Irish Melodies. 
Among those that caused him these emotions was the one 
beginning — 

' ' WTien first I met thee, ■warm and j'oung." 

The words of this melody, besides the moral sentiment they 
express, also admit a political meaning. Lord Byron reject- 
ed this meaning, and delivered his soul over, with the liveli- 
est motion, to the more natural sentiment conveyed in that 
song." 

" Only the fear of seeming to aifect sensibility could have 
* Moore, 315, 



Qualities and Virtues of Soul. 843 

restrained my tears," he said once, on hearing Mrs. I) 

sing 

" Could'st thou look." 

" Very often," said Mme. G , " I have seen him with tears 

in his eyes when I was playing favorite airs to him on the 
piano, of which he never got tired."* 

Stendhall also speaks of Lord Byron's emotion while listen- 
ino- to a piece of music by Mayer at Milan, and says that if he 
lived a hundred years he could never forget the divine ex- 
pression of his physiognomy while thus engaged. 

At most. Lord Byron could only admire for a moment ma- 
terial beauty without expression in women ; it might give 
rise to sensations, but could never inspire him with the slight- 
est sentiment. 

We have said enough of the female characters he created : 
sweet incarnations of the most amiable qualities of heart and 
soul. Let us add here, that although greatly alive to beauty 
of form, he could not believe in a fine woman's delicate feel- 
ing, unless her beauty were accompanied by expression de- 
noting her qualities of heart and mind. Beauty of form, of 
feature, and of color w^ere nothing to him, if a woman had 
not also beauty of expression ; if he could not see, he said, 
beauty of soul in her eyes. " Beauty and goodness have al- 
ways been associated in my idea," said he, at Genoa, to the 

Countess B , " for in my experience I have generally seen 

them go together. What constitutes true beauty for me," 
added he, " is the soul looking through the eyes. Sometimes 
women that were called beautiful have been pointed out to 
me that could never in the least have excited my feelings, 
because they wanted physiognomy, or expression, which is 
the same thing ; while others, scarcely noticed, quite struck 
and attracted me by their expression of face," 

He admired Lady C very much, because, he said, her 

beauty expressed purity, peace, dreaminess, giving the idea 
that she had never inspired or experienced aught but holy emo- 
tions. He once thought of marrying another young lady, 
because she excited the same feelings. All the Avomen who 
more or less interested him in England were remarkable for 
their intellect or their education, including her whom he se- 

* See "Life in Italy." 



o4-i Qualities and Virtues of Soul. 

lected for his companion through life. Only, with regard to 
her, he trusted too much to rejjutation and appearance ; he 
saw what she had, not what was wanting. She was in great 
part the cause of his deadly antijDathy to regular "blue 
stockings ;" but that did not change the necessity of intellect 
for exciting his interest. It only required, he said, for the 
dress to hide the color of the stocMngs. The name he gave 
to his natural daughter belonged to a Venetian lady, whose 
cleverness he admired, and with Avhoni his acquaintance con- 
sisted in a mere exchange of thought. Often he has been 
heard to say that he could never have loved a silly woman, 
however beautiful; nor yet a vulgar woman, whether the 
defect were the result of birth, or education, or tastes. He 
felt no attraction for that style of woman since called " fast." 
Even among the light characters whose acquaintance ho 
permitted to himself at Venice, he avoided those who were 

too bold. There lived then at Venice Mme. V , a perfect 

siren. All Venice was at her feet; Lord Byrou would not 
know her, and at Bologr.a he refused to make acquaintance 

with a person of still higher rank. Countess M , who was 

both charming and estimable, but who had the fault in his 
eyes of attracting too much general admiration. Her air of 
modesty and reserve Avas what principally drew him toward 
Miss Milbank, At Ferrara, where he met Countess Mosti and 
thought her most delightful, he did not feel the same sympa- 
thy for her sister, who was, however, much more brilliant, 
and whose singing excited the admiration of every one. 

In order to be truly loved by Lord Byron, it was requi- 
site for a Avoman to live in a sort of illusive atmosphere for 
him, to appear somewhat like an immaterial being, not sub- 
ject to vulgar corporeal necessities. Thence arose his an- 
tipathy (considered so singular) to see the woman he loved 
eat. In short, spiritual and manly in his habits, lie was equal- 
ly so with his person. 

It sufficed to see his fice, upon which there reigned such 
gentleness allied to so much dignity ; and his look, never to 
be forgotten ; and the unrivalled mouth, which seemed in- 
capable of lending itself to any material use ; a simple glance 
enabled one to understand that this privileged being was en- 
dowed with all noble passions, joined to an instinctive hor- 



Qualities and Virtues of Soul. 345 

ror of all that is low and vulgar in human nature. " His 
beauty was quite independent of his dress," said Lady Bless- 
ington. 

If, then, liis nails were roseate as the shells of the ocean 
(according to her expression) ; if his complexion was trans- 
parent ; his teeth like pearls ; his hair glossy and curling ; he 
had only to thank Providence for having lavished on him 
and preserved to him so many free gifts. But it is not easy 
to persuade others of such remarkable exceptions to the gen- 
ei'al rule. Those who do not possess the same advantages 
are incredulous ; and, indeed, there were not wanting per- 
sons to deny, at least in part, that he had them. 

Soon after his death an account of him was published in 
the " London Magazine," containing some truths mixed up 
with a heap of calumnies. Among other things, it was said 
" that Lord Byron constantly wore gloves." To which Count 
Pietro Gamba replied, "77ia« is not true; Lord Byron wore 
them less than any other man of his standing." 

Another declared that his fingers were loaded with rings ; 
he only wore one, which was a token of affection. In his 
rooms hardly ordinary comforts could be found. He was 
not one to carry about with him the habits of his own coun- 
try. Indeed, his habits consisted in having none. During 
his travels, the most difficult to please were his valet and 
other servants. " On his last journey," says Count Gamba, 
" he passed six days without vmdressing." 

His sole self-indulgence consisted in frequent bathing; 
for his only craving was for extreme cleanliness. But, just 
as the disciples of Epicurus would never have adopted his 
regimen, so would they equally have refused to imitate this 
last enjoyment ; which was a little too manly for them, for 
liis baths were mostly taken on Ocean's back; struggling 
against the stormy wave, and that in all seasons, up to mid- 
December. Such was the fastidious delicacy of this epicu- 
rean !* 

But to acknowledge all these things, or even any thing 
extraordinarily good in the author of " Don Juan," the "Age 

* " He was more a mental being, if I may use this phrase," said Captain 
Parn% who knew him at Missolonghi, "than any one I ever saw; he Jived on 
tliou£!;hts more than on food." 

P2 



346 Qualities and Virtues of Soul. 

of Bronze," the " Vision ;" in a son so wmiting in respect for 
the weaknesses of his mother-country ; in a poet that had 
dared to chastise powerful enemies, and the limit of whose 
audacity was not even yet known, for his death had just 
condemned, through revelations and imprudent biographies, 
many persons and things to a sorry kind of immortality ; to 
praise him, declare him guiltless, do him justice, — truly that 
would have been asking too much from England at that 
time. England has since made great strides in the path of 
generous toleration and even toward justice to Lord Byron. 
For vain is calumny after a time : truth destroys calumny by 
evoking facts. These form a clear atmosphere, wherein truth 
becomes luminous, as the sun in its atmosphere : for facts 
give birth to truth, and are mortal to calumny. 



The Constancy of Lord Byron. 347 



CHAPTER XI. 

THE CONSTANCY OF LORD BYRON. 

Among Lord Byron's moral virtues, may we comit that of 
constancy? Men in general, not finding this virtue in their 
own lives, refuse to believe in its existence among those who, 
in exception to the common rule, do possess it. They must 
be forced to this act of justice as to many others. This is 
comprehensible ; constancy is so rare ! 

"I less easily believe constancy in men than any thing else," 
says Montaigne, " and nothing more easily than inconstancy." 

Besides the difficulties common to every one, Lord Byron 
had also to fight against those difficulties peculiar to his sen- 
sitive nature and his vast intelligence. 

" The largest minds," says Bacon, " are the least constant, 
because they find reasons for deliberating, where others only 
see occasion for acting." 

But if these difficulties overcame Lord Bacon's constancy, 
could they have the same power over Lord Byron, who was 
indeed his equal in mind, but his opiDOsite in conduct and 
strength of soul ? There are three sorts of constancy : that 
of affection, which has its source in goodness of heart ; that 
of taste, flowing from beauty of soul ; that of idea, derived 
from rectitude of intelligence. 

Did Lord Byron possess the whole of these, or only a part ? 
As this may be chiefly proved, not from writings or words, 
but by conduct, let us ask the question of those Avho kncAV 
him personally and at all periods of his life. 

Was he constant in his ideas ? Moore, speaking of Loi'd 
Byron's intellectual faculties, of his variableness, of which he 
makes too much, for the reasons I have mentioned,* and of 
the*danger to which it exposed his consistency and oneness of 
character, says : — 

* hSee chapter on "Mobility." 



0-48 The Constancy of Lord Byron. 

" The consciousness, indeed, of his OAvn natural tendency 
to yield thus to every chance impression, and change with ev- 
ery passing impulse, Avas not only forever present to his mind, 
but, aware as he was of the suspicion of weakness attached by 
the world to any retractation or abandonment of long-professed 
opinions, had the effect of keeping him in that general line of 
consistency, on certain great subjects, Avhich, notwithstanding 
occasional fluctuations and contradictions as to the details of 
these very subjects, he continued to preserve throughout life. 
A passage from one of his manuscripts will show how saga- 
ciously he saw the necessity of guarding himself against his 
own instability in this respect : — ' The world,' he says, ' visits 
change of politics or change of religion with a more severe 
censure than a mere difference of opinion would appear to me 
to deserve. But there must be some reason for this feeling, 
and I think it is that this departure from the earliest instilled 
ideas of our childhood, and from the line of conduct chosen 
by us when we first enter into public life, have been seen to 
have more mischievous results for society, and to prove more 
weakness of mind than other actions, in themselves more im- 
moral.' " 

" To superficial observers," says the Hon. Col. Stanhope, 
" his conduct might appear uncertain ; and that Avas the case 
sometimes, but only up to a certain 2)omt. His genius was 
limitless and versatile, and in conversation he passed boldly 
from grave to gay, from light to serious topics ; but never- 
theless, vpon the whole and in reality, no man was more con- 
stant, I might almost say more obstinate, than Lord Byron in 
the jmrsnit of great objects. For instance, in religion and in 
politics, he seemed as firm as a rock, though, like a rock, he 
Avas sometimes subject to great shocks, to the convulsions of 
nature in commotion. What I aftirm is, that Lord Byron had 
very fixed opinions on important matters. ' It is not from the 
opinion he wished to give of himself, nor from Avhat he allow- 
ed to escape his lips, that I could have drawn this conclusion ; 
for, in conversing wnth me on politics or religion, and passing 
capriciously over this latter subject, sometimes laughing and 
making strings of jests, he would say, for instance, ' the mor»I 
think the more I doubt — I am a thorough skeptic f but 1 find 
these words contradicted in all his actions, and in cdl his sen^ 



The Constancy of Lord Byron. 349" 

timents seriously exjyressed fro)n childhood to death. And I 
opine that although occasionally he may have appeared change- 
able, still he always came back to certain fixed ideas in his 
mind; that he always entertained a constant attachment to 
liberty, according to his notions of liberty ; and that, although 
not orthodox in religion, \\e firmly believed in the existence of 
a God. It is then equally false to represent him as an atheist 
or as an orthodox Christian. Lord Byron was, as he often 
told me, a thorough deist.''''* 

It would be easy to prove in a thousand ways that, despite 
the danger of inconstancy resulting from his great sensibility, 
imagination, and intellect, no one, more than Lord Byron, 
steadily and firmly adhered through life in his actions to the 
principles which constitute the man of honor. Chances, ca- 
prices, inequalities of temper, which are to sensitive natures 
what bubbles are on a lake, all disappeared when these great 
principles required to be acted upon ; and the effects even of 
his well-nigh inexhaustible benevolence were checked, if he had 
to struggle against his principles. "VVe find in his memoranda, 
1813 : — " I like George Byron " (his cousin, the present lord) ; 
"I like him much more than one generally does one's heirs. 
He is a fine fellow. I would do any thing to see him advance 
in his career as a sailor ; any thing except apostatize /" (Lord 
Byron was a Whig, and his cousin a Tory^ 

As it is impossible to quote every thing, I will only say that 
his passion for firmness and constancy in the principles of 
honor, went so far as to inspire him with repugnance for those 
characters lacking the firmness and oneness of action which he 
considered it a sacred duty to practice. It is even to this senti- 
ment that must be attributed certain antipathies which he ex- 
pressed, sometimes by words and sometimes by silence, and 
which have been laid to totally different, and quite impossi- 
ble motives. For instance, his silence concerning Chateaubri- 
and, expressive of his little sympathy for the individual (a 
silence so much resented by this proud vindictive poet, and 
for which he revenged himself in different ways), was not 
caused solely by the radical antagonism existing between their 
two natures. Assuredly, the literary affectation, the want of 
sincerity, the theatrical and declamatory nature of Chateau- 

* Stanhope, Pavrv, 2.1."). 



350 The Constancy of Lord Byron. 

briand's soul, who was positively ill with insatiable pride, in- 
nate and incurable ennui, aU this could little assimilate with 
the simplicity, sincerity, passionate tenderness and devotion of 
Lord Byron. But his repugnance was especially directed 
against the skeptic, who made himself the champion of Cathol- 
icism, and the liberal who upheld the divine right of kings.* 

A few days before Lord Byron set out for his last journey 
to Greece, a young man (M. Coullmann) arrived at Genoa, 
bringing him the admiring homage of many celebrated men 
in France, who sent him their respective works. Among the 
number were Delavigne and Lamartine. Chateaubriand, of 
course, was conspicuous by his absence : but an anecdote 
Coullmann related, of what had just occurred at Turin, great- 
ly amused Lord Byron. Cliateaubriand had lately been pre- 
sented in his capacity of ambassador, whereupon the queen 
said to him: "Are you any relation to that Chateaubriand 
who has written something?'''' 

Lord Byron, laughing heartily at the anecdote, hastened to 
go and repeat it to the Countess G . 

The same sentiment had disenchanted him with Monti, 
whom he had so mucfi admired at Milan, and with several 
other rival poets. 

When Lord Byron heard it said of any one, " he has 
changed sides, he has abandoned his j^arty, he has forfeited 
his word," one might feel sure that all his natural indulgence, 
generally so great, Avas gone : he looked upon such a fault as 
forming only a desjiicable variety of the vice he never for- 
gave, viz., untruth. At most, he could only make an excep- 
tion in favor of women. 

" I have received a very pretty note from Madame de Stael," 
Ave read in his memoranda of 1813; "her works are my de- 
light, and she also (for half an. hour). But I do not like her 
politics, or, at least, her changes hi politics. If she had been, 
mqualis ah incepto^ that would be nothing. But, she is a wom- 
an, . . ; and, intellectually, she has done more than all the rest 
of her sex put together." 

Nevertheless, constancy in idea being subservient to the 
consent of the mind, must undoubtedly have undergone oscil- 
lations with Lord Byron. That was, however, only the case 

* See Sainte-Beuvp, vol. i. p. '28G. 



The Constancy of Lord Byron. 351 

with regard to ideas which could be discussed, aud which re- 
quired to pass through the ordeal of long reflection and prac- 
tice, before being fully adopted by him. But religious ideas 
were not of this number ; on the contrary, they held the first 
place in the order of those to be accepted and raised into 
principles by every man of honor and good sense. For, what- 
ever may have been his fluctuations with regard to certain 
points of religious doctrine, sects and modes of worship, it is 
certain that in great fundamental matters his mind never se- 
riously doubted, and thus escaped the influence of fi'iends less 
sensible, — of Matthews in his early youth, and of Shelley at a 
later period.* That touching Prayer to the Divinity, written 
in boyhood, and which is so full of hope and faith in the soul's 
immortality, and in the existence of a personal God, he might 
have signed again when he came to act instead of writing, as 
also on his death-bed.f 

Between the commencemept of his career at eighteen and 
its close at the age of thirty-six, it is easy to see, by his lan- 
guage, correspondence, and works, that his mind had passed 
successively through different phases before arriving at the 
last result. The religious idea is more or less clear. Never- 
theless, one perceives a golden ray ever present, connecting 
the different periods of his life, keeping up heat and light in 
his soul, and giving unity to his whole career. Hope, desire, 
and I may almost say, a sort of latent faith, always influenced 
him until they merged into the conviction whose light never 
more abandoned him. 

At fifteen years of age, while at Harrow, he fought with 
Lord Calthorpe for calling him an atheist; at eighteen, he 
wrote his beautiful profession of faith in the Prayer to the 
Divinity, and in the touching "Adieu," which he wrote when 
he thought he would soon die. At nineteen, giving the list in 
his memoranda of books already read (a list hardly credible), 
he says : " With regard to books on religion, I have read 
Blair, Porteous, Tillotson, Hooker, — all very tiresome. I de- 
test books about religion, but I adore and love my God, apart 
from the blasphemous notions of sectarians, and without be- 
lieving in their absurd and damnable heresies, mysteries, etc." 

* See chapter on " Religion." 

t See this prayer in chapter on " Relificion." 



852 The Constancy of Lord Byron. 

At twenty-one, when he had passed through the double in- 
fluence exercised by Pagan classical literature and German 
philosophies, and was in a transition state, he wrote " Childe 
Harold ;" but the skeptical tendencies to be found in one 
stanza appear like a bravado, the result of spleen, a feeling that 
made him sviffer, and which he speedily threw aside. For he 
wrote, at the same time, the stanza upon the death of a friend, 
whom he hopes to see again in the land of souls, and after- 
ward, the elegies to Thyrza, which are full of faith in immor- 
tality. At thirty, writing some philosophical reflections in 
his memorandum-book, he says : " One can not doubt the im- 
mortality of the soul." 

And, elsewhere, he also says that Christianity appears to 
him essentially founded on the immateriality of the soul, and 
that, for this reason, the Christian materialism of Priestley had 
always struck him as being a deadly sort of doctrine. " Be- 
lieve, if you please," added he, " in the material resurrection 
of the body, but not without a soul : it would be cruel indeed, 
if, after having had a soul in this world (and our mind, by 
whatever name you call it, is really a soul), we were to be 
separated from it in the other, even for material immortality! 
I confess my partiality for mind." 

Alluding to the systems of philosophy that do not admit 
creation according to Genesis, he says, that " even if we could 
get rid of Adam and Eve, of the apple and the serpent, we 
should not know what to put in their place ; that the diflicul- 
ty would not be overcome ; that things must have had a be- 
ginning, it matters not when and how ; that creation must 
have had an origin and a Creator. For creation is much more 
natural and easy to imagine than a concurrence of atoms; 
that all things may be traced to their sources even though 
they end by emptying themselves into an ocean." 

We have seen what he said to Parry u])on religion* and 
its ministers, upon God Almighty and the hope of enjoying 
eternal life, only a few weeks before his glorious death. 

And when the hand of death was already upon him, a few 
moments before his agony, did he not say that eternity and 
space were already before his eyes, but that on this point, 
thanks to God, Ae rcas happy and tranquil? that the thought 

* Sec chapter on "Religion." 



The Constancy of Lord Byron. 353 

of living eternally, of living another life, was a great consola- 
tion to him ? that Christianity was the purest and most liberal 
of all religions (although a little spoiled by the ministers of 
Christ, often the worst enemies of its liberal and charitable 
doctrines) ; but that, as to the questions depending on these 
doctrines, and which God alone, all powerful, can determine, 
in Him alone did he wish to rest ? 

But if Lord Byron was constant to a certain order of ideas, 
was he equally constant in his affections ? Moore again shall 
answer: — 

"The same distrust in his own steadiness, thus keeping 
alive in him a conscientious self -watchfulness, concurred not a 
little, I have no doubt, with the innate kindness of his nature, 
to preserve so constant and unbroken the greater number of 
his attachments through life — some of them, as in the instance 
of his mother, owing evidently more to a sense of duty than 
of real affection, the consistency with which, so creditably to 
the strength of his character, they were maintained." 

But, putting aside family affections, where constancy may 
appear a duty and a necessity, let us see what Lord Byron was 
in affections of his own choice, — such as friendship and love, 
where inconstancy is a sin that the world easily forgives. 

We have seen what the friendship of Lord Byron meant. 
Death destroyed several of the young existences with which 
his heart was bound up, and his first sorrows sprang from 
these misfortunes. But never by his will, caprice, or fault, 
did he lose a single friend ! Even the wrongs they inflicted, 
Avhile they weighed i;pon his mind, altered his opinions some- 
times, dispelled some sweet illusions and grieved his heart, 
yet could not succeed in changing it. He contented himself 
with judging the individual in such cases, sometimes with 
philosophical indulgence Avhich he was only too much accus- 
tomed to hide under the veil of pleasantry, and sometimes in 
showing openly how much his heart was wounded.* 

This constancy of heart that he showed in friendship, was 
it equally his in matters of love ? By his energy of soul, una- 
ble ever to forget any thing, Lord Byron possessed the first 
condition toward constancy in love. Contrary to those uu- 

* See octaves 48, 49 and 50, canto xiv."Don Juan ;" and several in "Childe 
Harold," cantos iii. and iv. 



354 The Constancy of Lord Byron. 

stable persons who say that they cease to love, for the smiple 
reason that they have already loved too much, it might rather 
be said of Lord Byron that he still loved on only because he 
had loved. In all his poems, he has idealized fidelity and con- 
stancy in love. All the heroes of his poems are faithful and 
constant, from Conrad, Lara, Selim, all those of the Oriental 
poems of his youth, \\\-> to those of his latter life, to his Bibli- 
cal mysteries. Even the angels, the seraphim, in that beau- 
tiful poem, written shortly before his death, " Heaven and 
Earth," prefer suffering to inconstancy, — to forfeit heaven 
rather than return there without their beloved. In vain the 
archangel Raphael presses the two amorous seraphim to come 
back to the celestial sphere, to abandon the two sisters, and 
menaces them. Samiasa replies : — 

"It may not be: 
We have chosen, and will endure." 

The poet gives it to be understood that they will be pun- 
ished ; which forms the moral of the piece. Don Juan him- 
self refuses the love of a beautiful sultana, from fidelity to the 
remembrance of his Haidee ; and when, afterward, he does 
yield, he seems to bear Avith, rather than to have sought suc- 
cess. One feels that this idealization of fidelity and constancy 
really has its source in Lord Byron's heart, and not in his im- 
agination. Still, however, the chief and undeniable proof 
must be drawn from his own life. 

The first condition for judging any one impartially with re- 
gard to inconstancy in love, is not only to know the facts and 
real circumstances connected with an intimacy, but especially 
to know the nature of the sentiment to which the name of love 
has been applied. We are aware that, at fifteen years of age, 
Lord Byron's heart was already under the influence of a young 
girl of eighteen.* The mere disproportion of age prevents 
such an affection from offering any grounds on which to ex- 
amine his capability of being constant. It is well known how 
much suffering this early passion caused him. The object of 
it, after denying him no token of reciprocal love that was in- 
nocent, giving him her%picture, agreeing to meetings, receiv- 
ing all the spontaneous, innocent, confiding tenderness of his 
young and ardent heart, left him in the lurch one fine day, on 
* See chapter on " Generosity." 



The Constancy of Lord Byron. 355 

account of his youth, in order to marry a fashionable, vulgar 
man. And thus did she destroy the charm which governed 
his heart. Precocious reflection, with its accompaniment of 
knowledge, agitating, confusing, throwing young souls on the 
road to error, succeeded to his enchantment. He then began 
(at sixteen) to talk of vanished illusions ; and, for want of 
something better, allowed himself to be carried away, and to 
lead the ordinary university life. He evidently only did what 
others did ; but he was made of different materials ; and while 
they thought this dissipation very natural, and, tranquil in their 
inferiority, believed themselves innocent, he alone disapproved 
of his own conduct and blamed it. The better to escape all 
this, he went in search of forgetfulness amid the fresh breezes 
of ocean, across the Pyrenees, among the ruins of ancient civ- 
ilization. Yet, after two years' travelling, on his return to 
England, his soul all love, his heart burning Mdth an infinite 
ardor, through that intoxication of success which weakens, 
through that eagerness for emotion caused by his vivacity of 
mind, and even by a sort of psychological curiosity. Lord By- 
ron did fall into new attachments. And these attachments, 
not being of a nature that could stand the trial of reflection, 
caused him to give up known for unknown objects. But his 
soul was ever agitated, in commotion, and, even when he 
changed, it was through necessity rather than caprice. In or- 
der to escape once more from himself, from the allurements of 
the senses, from the effects of the enthusiasm which his per- 
sonal beauty and his genius excited among women, he resolved 
to take refuge in an indissoluble tie, in a tie formed by duty, not 
love. Perhaps he might have found strength for perseverance 
in the beauty of the sacrifice. His soul was quite capable of 
it. But destiny pursued him in his choice, and rendered it 
impossible. To his misfortune, he married Miss Milbank.* 
Again he drifted away from the right path, but, this time, with 
the resolution of keeping his heart independent, his soul free 
and unfettered by any indissoluble tie.f But in coming to this 
determination at the age of twenty-eight, he had not consulted 
his heart, ever athirst for infinitude. Vainly he sought to lull 
it, to keep it earthward, to laugh at his own aspirations — use- 
less labor ! One day it broke loose. Nature is like water ; 

* See chapter on " Marriage." f See " Life at Venice, at Milan." 



356 The Constancy of Lord Byron. 

sooner or later it must find its equilibrium. From that day 
forth Psyche's lamp had no more light ; reflection had no more 
power ; and the love which had taken possession of his soul 
left him not again, but accompanied him to his last hour, 
through the modifications inevitable in earthly affections. 
This constancy maintamed thenceforth without a struggle, he 
understood at once ; and felt that the unchanging sentiment 
belonged equally to his will and to his destiny. ^^Ccelum, 
non animam mutant qui trans mare currunt,^'' wrote he one 
day at Ravenna, on the opening page .of " Jacopo Ortis," Fos- 
colo's work, that had just fallen into his hands ; for he knew 
that no one could read this avowal of his heart Avhere he had 
traced it. After having remarked the strange coincidence by 
which this volume was brought a second time before him, just 
when he was, as once before, in extreme agitation, he continued 
thus : — 

"Most men bewail not having attained the object of their 
desires. I had oftener to deplore the obtaining mine, for I 
can not love moderately, nor quiet my heart with mere frui- 
tion. The letters of this Italian Werther are very interesting ; 
at least I think so, but my present feelings hardly render me 
a competent judge." 

Another time, a volume of " Corinne," translated into Ital- 
ian, fell under his notice at Kaveima. In the same language, 
Avhich no one then about, him could read, he confided to this 
book the secret of his heart, and, after having poured out its 
fullness in words of noble melting tenderness, concluded thus : 
— " Think of me when Alps and sea shall separate us ; hut that 
will never come to pass^iailess you so will it." 

It was not willed, and therefore the separation did not 
take place. But, alas ! the day arrived when he Avas so en- 
tangled in a multiplicity of complications, and honor spoke so 
loudly, that both sides were forced to will it. 

Whoever should consider this departure the result of in- 
constancy, is incapable to form an estimate of his great soul. 
His affection, that had lasted for years, admitted no longer 
of any imeasiness, for it was brought into complete harmony 
with that of her he loved. Naturally his heart underwent 
the transformation produced by time. His affection was 
gradually acquiring the sweetness of unchanging friendship. 



The Constancy of Lokd Bykon. 357 

without losing the charm appertaining to ardor of passion. 
The sacrifice entailed by this departure was in proportion to 
these sentiments. " Often," says M , " during the pas- 
sage, we saw his eyes filled with tears." The sadness de- 
scribed by Mr. Barry of his last visit to Albano has been 
seen.* These tears and tliis sadness betray the extent of his 
sublime sacrifice ! And then, when once arrived in Greece, 
although determined to brave all the storms gathering above 

his head, he wrote unceasingly to Madame G , with that 

•ease and simplicity which not only forbade any exaggeration 
of sentiment, but even made him restrain its expression ; 
which was also rendered imperative by the circiamstances 
then surrounding her. 

" I shall fulfill the object of my mission from the commit- 
tee, and then . . . return to Italy. . . Pray be as cheerful and 
tranquil as you can, and be assured that there is nothing here 
that can excite any thing but a wish to be with you again, 
though we are very kindly treated by the English here of all 
descriptions." 

" September 11. 

"You may be sure that the moment I can join yon again 
will be as Avelcome to me as at any period of our acquaint- 
ance. There is nothing very attractive here to occupy ray 
attention ; but both honor and inclination demand that I 
should serve the Greek cause. I Avish that this cause, as well 
as the affairs of Spain, were favorably settled, that I might 
return to Italy and relate all my adventures to you." 

Thus much for his constancy when he truly loved. It 
Avould be worth inquiry how many men and how many writ- 
ers have carried their ideal of constancy into their own life to 
a higher degree than Lord Byron? My opinion is that if, 
the same circumstances given, the number went a little be- 
yond one, we might consider the result very satisfactory. 

After having seen that Lord Byron was unchangeable in 
great principles and ideas, as soon as his mind Avas convinced, 
and that he Avas constant to all the true sentiments of his 
heart, it still remains to be shown whether he Avas equally so 
in his tastes and habits. 

* See chapter on " Strength of Soul." 



358 The Constancy of Lord Byron, 

It may be said of most men that they have no character, 
because they often vary in taste, and without even perceiving 
it. That could not be asserted of Lord Byron, although 
sometimes, according to his self -accusing custom, he declared 
himself to be inconstant. 

The truth is that he was, on the contrary, remarkably 
steadfast in his tastes. The nature of his preferences, and 
the conclusions to be drawn from them, will form the subject 
of another chapter, ^Ve shall only speak of them here as re- 
lating to constancy. . 

" We shall often have occasion," says Moore, " to remark 
the fidelity to early habits and tastes which distinguished 
Lord Byron," Moore then observes the extraordinary con- 
stancy Lord Byron showed in clinging to all the impressions 
of youth ; and he adduces as a proof the care with which he 
preserved the notes and letters written by his favorite com- 
rades at school, even when they were younger than himself. 
These letters he enriched with dates and notes, after, years of 
long interval, while very few of his childish effusions have 
been kept by the opposite parties. Moore also notes several 
other features of this constancy, which he continued to practice 
throughout life. For instance, his punctuality in answering 
letters immediately, despite his distaste for epistolary effu- 
sions ; and his love for simple music, such as that of the bal- 
lads that used to attract him at sixteen to Miss Pigott's sa- 
loon. It was partly this same taste that made him enjoy so 
much, at twenty-six, the evenings he passed at his friend Kin- 
naird's house (some months before his marriage, the last of 
his London life), when Moore would sing his favorite songs, 
bringing tears to Byron's eyes. And it was this same taste 
that subsequently drew him to the piano at which Madame 

G sat, at Ravenna, Pisa, Genoa; and which, when slie 

played or sung Mozart's and Rossini's favorite motets, made 
him say that he no longer loved any other music but hers. 

What he had once loved never tired him. Memory was 
to him like an -enchanter's wand, throwing. some charm into 
objects which in themselves possessed none. He loved the 
land where he had loved, however naturally unattractive it 
might be : witness Ravenna, and Italy in general, 

" Possession of what I truly love," said he, in the very 



The Constancy of Lord Byron. 359 

rare moments when he did liimself justice, " does not cloy 
me." He loved the mountains of Greece, because they re- 
called those of Scotland ; he would have loved other mount- 
ains, because they recalled those of Greece. 

A few months before his death, he said in his charming 
poem " The Island,"— 

"Long have I roam'd through hinds which are not mine, 
Adored, the Alp, and loved the Apennine, 
Revered Parnassus, and beheld the steep 
Jove's Ida and Olympus crown the dee]) : 
But 'twas not all long ages' lore, nor all 
Their nature held me in their thrilling thrall ; 
The infant rapture still survived the boy, 
And Loch-na-gar with Ida look'd o'er Troy, 
Mix'd Celtic memories with the Phrj-gian mount, 
And Highland linns with Castalie's clear fount. 
Forgive me, Homer's universal shade I 
Forgive me, Phoebus! that mj' fancy stra3''d; 
The north and nature taught me to adore 
Your scenes sublime, from those beloved before."* 

He would love a jjlace of abode because he had loved when 
in it. The same with regard to a dwelling, a walk, a melody, 
a perfume, a form, and even a dish ; he who cared so little for 
any sort of food. His childish impressions, his readings at 
that age, had a great deal to do with his choice of poetic sub- 
jects afterward ; and we find them again reproduced even in 
his last dramatic work. " Werner," written in such a fine 
moral sense, is the result of the " Canterbury Tale " read in 
childhood. Never was man more constant in his habits and 
tastes than he ; and, indeed, it required that indefinable charm 
of soul he possessed, and which pervaded his whole being, to 
prevent monotony from perverting this quality into a fault. 

Why, then, have his biographers talked so much of 'his mo- 
bility, if it were not to make Lord Byron pass for a creature 
swayed by every fresh impulse, and incapable of steady feel- 
ing? I have given the first reason elsewhere.f But I will 
add another, namely, that they have transferred the qualities 
of the poet to the man in an erroneous manner ; that to the 
versatility of his genius (one of his great gifts, and which 
ever belong to him) they have added mobility of character, 
such as often, too often, perhaps, influenced his conversation, 
and tinctured his external fictitious nature. But they have 

* ''The Island," canto ii. stanza 12. | See chapter on "Mobility." 



360 The Constancy of Lokd Byron. 

done so without examining his actions, without reflecting that 
this mobility vanished as it was written, or in the light play 
of his witty conversation, or the trivial acts of his life. Other- 
Avise they would have been forced to confess, that it never 
had any influence on his conduct in matters -of moment, that 
he was persevering and firm to an extremely rare degree in 
all things essential and which constitute man in his moral 
a7id social eapaciti/. 

We may then sum up by saying that Lord Byron general- 
ly established on an impregnable rock, guarded by unbending 
principles, those great virtues to which principles are essen- 
tial ; but that, after making these treasures secure — for treas- 
ures they are to the man of honor and worth — once having 
placed them beyond the reach of sensibility and sentiment, he 
may sometimes have allowed the lesser virtues (within ordi- 
nary bonds) such indulgence as flowed from his kindly na- 
ture, and such as his youth rendered natural to a feeling 
heart and ardent imagination. Like all men, he was only 
truly firm under serious circumstances, when he wished to 
show energy in fulfilling a duty. Thiis Lord Byron allowed 
his pen to jest, to mark the follies of men : sometimes attack- 
ing them boldly in front, sometimes aiming light arrows 
aslant, ridiculing, chastising, as humor or fancy jirompted ; 
and he gave himself the same liberty of language in private 
conversation, according to the character of those with Avhom 
he conversed. On all these occasions his genius undoubtedly 
gave itself up to versatility. But let us not forget that all 
that which changes and becomes effaced in hearts of incon- 
stant mood, and which ought not to change in men of honor 
and worth, never did vary in him. Let us acknowledge, in 
short, that, if mobility belonged to the sensitive parts of his 
nature, constancy no less characterized his moral and intellect- 
ual beinsr. 



The Coubage of Lord Byron. 361 



CHAPTER XII. 

THE COURAGE AND FORTITUDE OF LORD BTRON. 

All the moral qualities that flow from energy — courage, 
intrepidity, fortitude ; in a word, self-control — shone with too 
much lustre in Lord Byron's soul for us to pass them over in 
silence, or even to call only superficial attention to them. 

But, it may be said, Why speak of his courage ? No one 
ever called it in question. Besides, is courage a virtue ? It 
is hardly a quality ; in reality it is but a duty. Yes, undoubt- 
edly, that is true, but there are different kinds of courage, and 
Lord Byron's Avas of such a peculiar nature, and showed itself 
imder such uncommon circumstances as to justify observation, 
for it evinces a quality necessary to be noticed by all who 
seek to portray his great soul with the wish of arriving at a 
close resemblance. 

" Whatever virtue may be allowed to T)elong to personal 
courage, it is most assuredly those who are endowed by na- 
ture with the liveliest imaginations, and who have, therefore, 
most vividly and simultaneously before their eyes all the re- 
mote and possible consequences of danger, that are most de- 
serving of whatever praise attends the exercise of that virtue." 

Certainly Lord Byron made part of the category, so that 
Moore adds : — 

" The courage of Lord Byron, as all his companions in peril 
testify, was of that noblest kind which rises with the great- 
ness of the occasion, and becomes the more self-collected and 
resisting the more imminent the danger." 

Thus, far from its being the natural impetuosity that 
causes rash natures to rush into danger. Lord Byron's cour- 
age was quite as much the result of reflection as of impulse. 
Ills teas courage of the noblest hind, a quality mixed up with 
other fine moral faculties, shining with light of its own, yet all 
combining to lend mutual lustre. This is, indeed, what ought 
to be called fortitude and self-control, and this is what we re- 

Q 



362 The Coukage and Fortitude 

mark in Lord Byron. But, in order not to sin against the 
scientific classification used by moralists, and which requires 
subdivisions, we will isolate it for a moment, and examine it 
under the name of courage, j^resence of mind, and coolness. 

Unaffected in his bravery, as in all things else, Lord.Byron 
did not seek dangers, but w^hen they presented themselves to 
him he met them with lofty intrepidity. 

To give some examples — and the difiiculty is to choose — 
let us consider him under different circumstances that occur- 
red during his first travels in the East. 

While at Malta he was on the point of fighting a duel, 
through some misunderstanding with an ofiicer on General 
Oakes's staff. The meeting had been fixed for an early hour, but 
Lord. Byron slept so soundly that his companion Avas obliged 
to awaken him. On arriving at the spot, Avhich Avas near the 
shore, his adversary was not yet there ; and Lord Byron, al- 
though his luggage had already been taken on board the brig 
that was to convey him to Albania, wished to give him the 
chance at least of another hour. During all this long interval 
he amused himself very quietly Avalking about the beach per- 
fectly unconcerned. 

At last an ofiicer, sent by his antagonist, arrived on the 
ground, bringing not only an exj^lanation of how the delay 
had arisen, but likcAvise all the excuses and satisfaction Lord 
Byron could desire for the supi)osed offense. Thus the duel 
did not take place. 

The gentleman Avho was to be his second could not suffi- 
ciently praise the coolness and firm courage shoAvn by Lord 
Byron throughout this affair. 

Some time later Lord Byron Avas on the mountains of 
Ej^irus Avith his friend and felloAA'-traveller, Mr. Hobhouse (now 
Lord Broughton). These mountains being then infested Avith 
banditti, they Avere accompanied by a numerous escort, and 
eA'en by one of the secretaries, as Avell as several retainers be- 
longing to the famous Ali Pasha of Joannina, AA'hom they had 
just been visiting. One CA^ening, seeing a storm impending, 
Mr. Hobhouse hastened on in front Avith part of their suite, 
in order sooner to reach a neighboring hamlet, and get shelter 
prepared. Loi'd Byron foUoAved Avith the remainder of the 
escort. Before he could arrive, hoAvever, the storm burst, 



Of Lord Byron. 363 

and soon became terrific. Mr. Hobhouse, who had long been 
safe under cover in the village, could see nothing of his friend. 

" It was seven in the evening," says Mr. Hobhouse, in his 
account of it, " and the fury of the storm had become quite 
alarming. Never before or since have I witnessed one so terri- 
ble. The roof of the hovel in Avhich we had taken shelter 
trembled beneath violent gusts of rain and wind, and the thun- 
der kept roaring without intermission, for the echo from one 
mountain crest had not ceased ere another frightful crash 
broke above our heads. The plain, and distant hills, visible 
through the chinks of the hut, seemed on fire.' In short, the 
tempest was terrific ; quite worthy of the Jupiter of ancient 
Greece. The peasants, no less religious than their ancestors, 
confessed their fears ; the women were crying around, and the 
men, at every new flash of lightning, invoked the name of God, 
making the sign of the cross." 

Meanwhile hours passed, midnight drew near, the storm 
was far-frora abating, and Lord Byron had not appeared. Mr. 
Hobhouse, in great alarm, ordered fires to be lighted on the 
heights, and guns to be let off in all directions. At length, 
toward one in the morning, a man, all pale and panic-stricken, 
soaked through to the skin, suddenly entered the cabin, mak- 
ing loud cries, exclamations, and gestures of despair. He be- 
longed to the escort, and speedily related the danger to which 
they had been exposed, and in which Lord Byron and his fol- 
lowers still were, and virging the necessity of sending off at 
once horses, guides, and men with torches, to extricate them 
from it. 

It appears that at the commencement of the storm, when 
only three miles from the village. Lord Byron, through the 
fault of his escort, lost the right path. After wandering about 
as chance directed, in complete ignorance of their Avhereabouts, 
and on the brink of precipices, they had stopped at last near a 
Turkish cemetery and close to a torrent, Avhich they had been 
enabled to distinguish through the flashes of lightning. Lord 
Byron was exposed to all the fury of the storm for nine con- 
secutive Jiours; his guides, instead of lending him any assist- 
ance, only increased the general confusion, running about on 
all sides, because they had been menaced with death by the 
dragoman George, who, in a paroxysm of rage and fear, had 



364 Tpie Courage and Fortitude 

fired off his pistols without warning any body, and Lord By- 
ron's English servants, fancying they were attacked by rob- 
bers, set up loud cries. 

It was three in the morning before the party could reach 
the shelter where their friends awaited them. During these 
nine consecutive hours of danger, Lord Byron never once lost 
his self-possession or serenity, (fr even that jjleasant vein of 
humor which made him always see the ridiculous side of 
things. 

About the same period Lord Byron and his companion, 
after having visited Eleusis, Avere obliged, by stress of weather, 
to stop some days at Keratea. Having heard of a wonderful 
cavern situated on Mount Parne, they determined to visit it. 
On arriving at the entrance they lighted torches of resinous 
wood, and, preceded by a guide, jDcnetrated through a small 
aperture, dragging themselves along the ground until they 
reached a sort of subterranean hall, ornamented with arcades 
and high cupolas of crystal, supported by columns of shining 
marcasite ; the hall itself opened out into large horizontal 
chambers, or else conducted to dark, deep yawning abysses 
toward the centre of the mountain. After having strayed 
from one grotto to another, the travellers arrived near a fount- 
ain of crystal Avater. There they stopped, till, seeing their 
torches wane low, they thought of retracing their steps. But, 
after walking for some minutes in the labyrinth, they again 
found themselves beside the mysterious fountain. Then they 
grcAV alarmed, for their guide acknowledged Avith terror that 
he had forgotten the itinerary of the cavern, and no loriger 
hneio ichei'e to find the outlet. 

While they Avere Avandering thus from one grotto to an- 
other, in a sort of despair, and occasionally dragging them- 
selves along to get through narroAV openings, their last torch 
was consumed. They remained a long time in total darkness, 
not knoAving aa hat to do, AA^hen, as if by miracle, a feeble ray 
of light made itself visible, and, directing their steps tOAvard 
it, they ended by reaching the mouth of the cavern. Certainly, 
it Avould be difficult to meet Avith a more alarming situation. 
Mr. Hobhouse, while confessing that for some moments it had 
been impossible to look forward to any thing else but the 
chance of a horrible death, declared that, not only Lord By- 



Of Lord Byron-. 365 

ron's presence of mind and coolness were admirable in the 
teeth of snch a prospect, but also that his playful humor never 
forsook him, and helped to keep up their spirits during min- 
utes that must have seemed years to all of them. 

It was during this same journey that, finding the mount- 
ains which separated them from the Morea were infested with 
banditti, they embarked on board a vessel of war, called the 
" Turk." A tempest broke out, and its violence, joined to the 
ignorance betrayed by the captain and sailors, put the vessel 
in great danger. Shipwreck seemed inevitable, and close at 
hand. Nothing was heard on board but cries, lamentations, 
and prayers. Lord Byron alone remained calm, doing every 
thing in his power to console and encourage the rest; and 
then at length, when he saw that his efforts were useless, he 
wrapped himself up in his Albanian cloak, and lay down on 
the deck, going tranquilly to sleep until fate should decide his 
destiny. 

After having given his mother a simple description of this 
tempest, he adds : — " I have learned to philosophize during 
ray travels, and, if I had not, what use is there in complain- 
ing ?" 

And Moore says : — • 

" I have heard the poet's fellow-traveller describe this re- 
markable instance of his coolness and courage even still more 
strikingly than it is here stated by himself. Finding that he 
was unable to be of any -service in the exertions wdiich their 
very seriovis danger called for, after a laugh or two at the 
l^anic of his valet, he not only wrapped himself up and lay 
down, in the manner here mentioned, but, when their difficul- 
ties were surmounted, was found fast asleep." 

These adventures happened to him when he was only twen- 
ty-one years of age, and within the course of a few weeks. But 
all his life he gave the same proofs of courage Avhen circum- 
stances called for them. 

And since we have chosen these examples from his first 
journey into Greece, at the beginning of his career, let us se- 
lect some others from the last, which took place near its close. 

Mr. H. Brown having been asked by Lord Harrington 
what his impressions were of Lord Byron, replied, " Lord By- 
ron was extremely calm in presence of danger. Here are two 



S6Q The Courage and Fortitude 

instances that I witnessed myself : — A Greek, named Costan- 
tino Zalichi, to whom his lordship had given his passage, once 
took up one of Manton's pistols, belonging to Lord Byron. 
It went off by accident, and the ball passed quite close to 
Lord Byron's temple. Without the least emotion Lord By- 
ron began explaining to the Greek how such accidents could 
be avoided. 

" On another occasion, near the Roman coast, we observed 
a suspicious-looking little vessel, armed, and apparently full 
of people. It was toward the end of the last Avar with Spain, 
during which many acts of piracy had been committed in the 
Mediterranean. And our captain was much alarmed. We 
were followed all day by this vessel, and toward evening, it 
seemed so ready for action that we no longer doubted being 
attacked. However a breeze arose, and darkness came on 
soon after, whereupon we lost sight of it. Lord Byron, while 
the danger lasted, remained jierfectly calm, giving his orders 
with the greatest tranquility and reflection."* 

And Lord Harrington, then Colonel Stanhope, says himself, 
in his Essay on Lord Byron : — 

" Lord I5yi-on was the beau ideal of chivalry. It might 
have lowered him in the esteem of wise men, if he had not 
given such extraordinary proofs of the noblest courage. 

" Even at moments of the greatest danger. Lord Byron C07i- 
tem2^lated death with ^^hilosojyhical calm. For instance, at 
the moment of returning from the alarming attack which had 
surprised him in my room (at Missolonghi), he immediately 
asked, with the most perfect self-possession, whether his life 
were in danger, as, in that case, he required the doctor to tell 
him so, /or he xoas not afraid of death. 

" Shortly after that frightful convulsion, when, weakened 
by loss of blood, he was lying on his bed of suffering, with his 
nervous system completely shaken, a band of mutinous Suli- 
otes, in their splendid dirty costumes, burst suddenly into his 
room, brandishing their weapons, and loudly demanding their 
savage rights. Lord Byron, as if electrified by the unexpect- 
ed act, appeared to have recovered his health, and, the more 
the Suliotes cried out and threatened, the more his cool cour- 
afje triumphed. The scene was really suhlime.''''\ 

* Parry, 206. t Essay by Colonel Stanhope. 



Of Lord Byron. 367 

And Count Gamba, in his interesting narrative of " Lord 
Byron's Last Journey into Greece," adds : — 

" It is impossible to do justice to the coohiess and mag- 
nanimity Lord Byron sliowed on all great occasions. Under 
ordinary circumstances he was irritable, but the sight of dan- 
ger calmed him instantly, restoring the free exercise of all the 
faculties of his noble nature. A man more indomitable, or 
firmer in the hour of danger than Lord Byron icas, 7iever 
existed^* 

But enough of these proofs, which, perhaps, say nothing 
new to the reader. Nevertheless, as they may call up again 
the pleasure ever afforded by the spectacle of great moral 
beauty, let us further add — the better to set forth the nature 
of Lord Byron's wonderful intrepidity in face of danger — that 
his energetic soul loved to contemplate those sublime things 
in Nature that are usually endured with terror. Tempests, 
the thunder's roll, the lightning's flash — any mysterious dis- 
play of Nature's forces, so that its violence occasioned neither 
misfortune nor suffering to sensitive beings — aroused in him 
the keenest sense of enjoyment, which in turn ministered to 
his genius, incapable of finding complete satisfaction in the 
beautiful, and ever yearning passionately after the siablime. 

As to his fortitude, that self-control which makes one bear 
affliction with external serenity. Lord Byron possessed it in as 
high a degree as he did firmness with regard to material ob- 
stacles and dangers. 

Endowed with exquisite sensibility, the great poet assured- 
ly went through cruel trials during his stormy career ; but in- 
stead of ostentatiously exhibiting his sorrows, Lord Byron on 
many occasions rather exaggerated the delicacy that led him 
to veil them under an appearance of stoicism. Only very rare- 
ly did his poetry echo back the sufferings endured within. 

Once, nevertheless, he wished, and rightly, to perpetuate in 
his verses the memory of the indignities heaped upon him by 
a guilty world. He wished that the great struggle he had 
been obliged to sustain against his destiny should not be for- 
gotten ; he wished to show how much his heart had been torn, 
his hopes sapped, his name blighted by the deepest injuries, 
the meanest perfidy. He had seen, he said, of what beings 

* " Last Journey to Greece," p. 174. 



368 The Courage and Fortitude 

with a human semblance were capable, from the frightful 
roar of foaming calumny to the low whisjDer of vile reptiles, 
adroitly distilling poison ; double -visaged Januses, Avho sup- 
ply the place of words by the language of the eyes, who lie 
without saying a syllable, and, by dint of a shrug or an affected 
sigh, impose on fools their unspoken calumnies. Yes, he had 
to undergo all that, and for once he wished it to be known. 

He owed it to himself to make this complaint ; his total 
silence would have been wrong ; it Avas necessary once for all 
to defend his character and reputation, and when he ran the 
risk of loshig the esteem of the Avorld his sensibility could not 
show itself in too lively a manner. 

But if he thus raised his voice to immortalize these indig- 
nities, it was not because he recoiled from suffering. 

"Let him come forward," exclaimed he, "whoever has 
seen me bow the head, or has remarked my courage wane 
with suffering." 

Already, at the time of the unexampled persecution raised 
against hira in London, when the separation from his wife 
took place, he wrote to Murray : — 

" February 20th, 181G. 

" You need not be in any apprehension or grief on my ac- 
count. Were I to be beaten down by the world and its in- 
heritors, I should have succumbed to many things years ago. 
You must not mistake my not bullying for dejection ; nor 
imagine that because I feel, I am to faint."* 

In all he wrote at this fatal period of his life, one perceives 
the wide gaping wound, which is however endured Avith the 
strength of a Titan, Avho at tAventy-nine is to become quite a 
philosopher, good, gentle, almost resigned. 

"The camel labors with the heaviest load, 
And the wolf -dies in silence, — not bestow'd 
In vain should such example be : if tliej', 
Things of ignoble or of savage mood, 
Endure and shrink not, we of nobler clay 
May temper it to bear, — it is but for a day."f 

Like all those Avho feel deeply the joys and griefs of their 
fellow-men, Lord Byron had received from nature all that 
could render him capable of moderating the external expres- 

* :Moore, " Letters." p. 241. f " Childe Harold." 



Of Lord Byron. 369 

siou of' his sensibility, when injustice Avas personal to himself. 
Moreover, circumstances, alas ! had only too much favored the 
development of this noble faculty in him. For, very early, he 
had received severe lessons from those terrible masters who 
nurture great souls to self-control ; from reverses, vanished 
illusions^ perils, wrongs. The storms however it was his des- 
tiny to encounter, though violent, not only did not cause him 
to be shipwrecked, but even helped to encircle his brow with 
the martyr's halo. 

But, we may be asked, whether this great control which 
Lord Byron exercised over himself, with regard to obstacles, 
dangers, and human injustice, existed equally with regard to 
his own passions. To those who should doubt it, and who, 
forgetting that Lord Byron only lived the age of jjassions, 
without taking into consideration all the circumstances that 
rendered difficult to him what is easier for others, should pre- 
tend that Lord Byron gave way to his passions oftener than 
he warred against them, to such we would say : " AVhat was 
he doing, then, when, at barely twenty-two years of age, he 
adopted an anchorite's regime, so as to render his soul more 
independent of matter? When he shut himself up at home, 
with the self-imposed task of writing whole poems before he 
came out, in order to overcome Ms thoughts, and maintai7i 
them 171 aline contrary to that lohich his passions demanded? 
When, grieved, calumniated, outraged, \ie preferred exile rath- 
er than yield to just resentment, and in order to avoid the dan- 
ger of finding himself in situations Avhere he might not have 
preserved his self-control .^" 

Have they forgotten that at Venice he subjected himself to 
the ungrateful task of learning languages more than difficult, 
and of working at other dry studies, in order io fix his thoughts 
on than, and divert them from resentment and anger ? 

He writes to Murray : " I find the Armenian language, 
which is double {the literary and the vtdgar tongue^, difficult, 
but not insupei-ably so (at least I hope not). I shall continue. 
I have found it necessary to chain ray mind down to very se- 
vere studies, and as this is the most difficult I can find here, it 
will be a net for the 'serpent?'' 

And have we not seen him overcome himself, just as he was 
setting out to go where his heart called him (for, notwith- 

Q2 



370 The Courage and Fortitude 

standing all his efforts, it had ceased to be independent), and 
thus defer a journey he sighed for, only to exercise acts of 
generosity, and liberate one of his gondoliers from the Aus- 
trian conscrijytion ? 

If a true biography could be written of Lord Byron we 
should see a constant struggle going on in this young man 
against his passions. And can more be asked of men than to 
fight against them ? Victory is the proof and the reward of 
combat. If sometimes, as with every man, victory failed him, 
oftener still he did achieve it ; and it is certain that his great 
desire always was to free himself from the tyranny of his pas- 
sions. 

His last triumphs were not only great — they were sviblime. 

The sadness that overwhelmed him during the latter part 
of his stay at Genoa is known. The struggles he had to 
maintain against his own heart may be conceived. 

It is also known how, being driven back into port by a 
storm, he resolved on visiting the palace of Albaro ; and it 
may well be imagined that the hours passed in this dwelling, 
then silent and deserted, must have seemed like those that 
count as years of anguish in the life of great and feeling souls, 
among whom visions of the future float before the over-ex- 
cited mind. It can not be doubted that he M'ould then wil- 
lingly have given up his fatal idea of leaving Italy ; indeed he 
declared so to Mr. Barry, who was with him ; but the senti- 
ment of his own dignity and of his promise given triumphed 
over his feelings. 

The night which followed this gloomy day again saw Lord 
Byron struggling against stormy waves, and not only deter- 
mined on pursuing his voyage, but also on appearing calm and 
serene to his fellow-travellers. 

Could peace, however, have dwelt within his soul? To 
show it outwardly must he not have struggled ? 

" I often saw Lord Byron during his last voyage from 
Genoa to Greece," says Mr. H. Browne, in a letter written to 
Colonel Stanhope ; " I often saw him in the midst of the 
greatest gayety suddenly become pensive, and his eyes fill 
vnth tears, doubtless from some painful remembrance. On 
these occasions he generally got up and retired to the solitude 
of his cabin." 



Of Lord Byron. 871 

And Colonel Stanhope, afterward Lord Harrington, who 
only knew Lord Byron later at Missolonghi, also says : " I 
have often observed Lord Byron in the middle of some gay 
animated conversation, stop, meditate, and his eyes to fill with 
tears." 

And all that he did in that fatal Greece, was it not a per- 
petual triumph over himself, his tastes, his desires, the wants 
of his nature and his heart ? 

He saw nothing in Greece, he wrote to Mme. G , that 

did not make him wish to retui-n to Italy, and yet he remain- 
ed in Greece. He would have preferred waiting in the Ionian 
Islands, and yet he set out for that fatal Missolonghi ! Lib- 
eral by principle, and aristocratic by birth, taste, and habits, 
he was condemned to continual intercourse with vulgar, tur- 
bulent, barbarous men, to come into contact with things re- 
pugnant to his nature and his tastes, and to struggle against 
a thousand difficulties — a thousand torments, moral and phys- 
ical; he felt, and knew, that even life would fail him if he 
did not leave Missolonghi, yet he i*emained. Every thing, in 
short, throughout this last stage of the noble pilgrim, pro- 
claims his empire over self. His triumph was always beauti- 
ful, and often sublime, but, alas ! he paid for it with his life. 



872 The Modesty of Lord Byron. 



CHAPTER Xm. 

THE MODESTY OF LORD BYRON. 

Among the qualities that belong to his genius, the one 
which formed its chief ornament has been too much forgot- 
ten. 

Modesty constituted a beautiful quality of his soul. If it 
has not been formally denied him ; if, even among those 
whom we term liis biographers, some have conceded modesty 
as pertaining to Lord Byron's genius, they have done so tim- 
idly ; and have at the same time indirectly denied it by ac- 
cusing him of pride. 

Was Lord Byron proud as a poet and as a man ? We 
shall have occasion to answer this question in another chap- 
ter. Here we shall only examine liis claims to modesty ; 
and we say, without hesitation, that it was as great in him 
as it has ever been in others. It shines in every line of his 
poetry and his prose, at every age and in all the cii'cumstan- 
ces of his life. 

" There is no real modesty " (says a great moralist of the 
present day) " without diffidence of self, inspired by a deep 
sense of the beautiful and by the fear of not being able to 
reach tlie perfection we conceive." 

As a poet. Lord Byron always undervalued or despised 
himself As a man, he did so still more ; he exaggerated this 
quality so far as to convert it into a fault, for he calumniated 
himself 

We have seen how unambitious Lord Byron was as a child, 
and with what facility he allowed his com^'ades to surpass 
him in intellectual exercises, reserving for his sole ambition 
the wish of excelling them in boyish games and in bodily ex- 
ercises. 

As a youth he did nothing but censure his own conduct, 
which was not at all different from that which his comrades 



The Modesty of Lord Byron, 873 

thought allowable in themselves. We have seen with what 
modest feelings he published his first poems ; with what do- 
cility he accepted criticisms, and yielded to the advice of 
friends whom he esteemed. 

When cruel criticism showed him neither mercy nor jus- 
tice, notwithstanding his youthful age, he lost, it is true, se- 
renity and moderation of spirit, but never once put aside his 
modesty. 

Instigated by a passion for truth, he exclaims in his first 
satire, — 

"Truth! rouse some genuine bard, and guide bis band 
To drive this pestilence from out the land." 

Certainly, he does not spare censure in this passionate sat- 
ire ; but, while inflicting it, he questions whether he should 
be the one to apply the lash : — 

"E'en I, least thinking of a thoughtless throng, 
Just skill'd to know the right and choose the wrong." 

It was during the time of his first travels that Lord By- 
ron wrote his first chef-cVceuvre ;* but so little was he aware 
of possessing great faculties that, while suflering from the ex- 
actions and torments they created within him, he only asked 
in return some amusement, an occujDation for long hours of 
solitude. 

Having begun " Childe Harold " as a memorial of his trav- 
elling impressions, he communicated it, on his return to En- 
gland, to the friend who had been his companion throughout. 
But, instead of meeting with indulgence and encouragement, 
this friend only blamed the poem, and called it an extrava- 
gant conception. 

He was, nevertheless, a competent judge and a poet him- 
self Why, then, such severity ? Did he wish to sacrifice 
the poet to the man, fearing for his friend lest the allusions 
therein made should lend further Aveapons to the malice of 
his enemies ? Did he dread for himself, and for those among 
their comrades who, two years before, had donned the preach- 
er's garb at Newstead Abbey, lest the voice of public opin- 
ion should mix them up in the j^retended disorders of which 
the Abbey had been the theatre, and which the poem either 

* Thp firpt two cfintos of "Childe Harold." 



374: The Modesty of Lokd Byron. 

exaggerated or invented? Whatsoever his motive, this friend 
was not certainly then a John of Bologna for Lord Byron ; 
bnt the modesty of the poet surpassed the severity of his 
judge ; for, accepting the blame as if it were merited, he re- 
stoi-ed the poem to its portfolio with such humility that when 
Mr. Dallas afterward heard of it almost by chance, and, fired 
with enthusiasm on reading it, pronounced this extravagant 
thing to be a sublime chef-d'oeuvre, he had the greatest dif- 
ficulty in persuading Lord Byron to make it public. 

Gilford's criticisms were always received by Lord Byron 
not only with docility and modesty but even Avith gratitude. 

He never lost an occasion of blaming himself as a poet and 
of depreciating his genius. Living only for affection, more 
than once Avhen he feared that the Avar going on against him 
might warp feeling, he Avas on the point of consigning all he 
had Avritten to the flames ; of destroying forever every ves- 
tige of it ; and only the fear of harming his publisher made 
him at last Avithdraw the given order. 

He kncAV only hoAV to praise his rivals, and to assist those 
requiring help or encouragement. 

NotAvithstanding the favor shoAvn him by the public, it al- 
ways appeared to him that he would Aveary it Avith any new 
production. 

When about to publish the " Bride of Abydos," he said, 
" I knoAV Avhat I risk, and Avith good reason, — losing the small 
reputation I have gained by putting the public to this new 
test ; but really I have ceased to attach any importance to 
that. I write and publish solely for the sake of occupation, 
to draw my thoughts away from reality, and take refuge hi 
imagination, howcA' cr dreadful." 

In 1814, when Murray (Avho Avas thinking of establishing 
a periodical for bringing out the works of living authors) 
consulted Lord Byron on the subject, he, Avhose splendid 
fame had already thrown all his contemporaries into the 
shade, ansAvered simply, that supported by such poets as 
Scott, Wordsworth, Southey, and many others, the undertak- 
ing would of course succeed ; and that for his part, he Avould 
unite with Hobhouse and Moore so as to furnish occasionally 
— a failure ! and at the same time he made use of the oppor- 
tunity to praise Campbell and Canning. 



The Modesty of Lokd Byron. 375 

Plis memorandum-book is one perpetual record of his hu- 
mility, even at a time when the public, of all classes and sez- 
es, had made him their idol. 

After having expressed in his memoranda for 1813 his 
sublime aspirations after glory — that is to say, the happiness 
he should experience in being not a ruler, but a guide and hen- < 
ef actor of Mimanity, a Washington, a Franklin, a Penn; " but 
no," added he ; " no, I shall never be any thing : or rather, I 
shall always be nothing. The most I can hope is that some 
one may say of me, ''He might, perluqis, if he would.' " 

The low estimation in which he held his poetical genius, 
to which he preferred action, amounted almost to a fault ; 
for he forgot that grand and beautiful truths, couched in 
burning words and lighted up by genius, are also actions. 
He really seemed to have difficulty in forgiving himself for 
writing at all. Even at the outset of his literary career he 
was indignant with his publisher for having taken steps with 
Gilford which looked like asking for praise. 

" It is bad enough to be a scribbler," said he, " without 
having recourse to such subterfuges for extorting praise or 
warding ofi" criticism." 

" I have never contemplated the prospect," wrote he, in 
1819, " of occupying a permanent place in the literature of 
my country. Those who know me best are aware of that ; 
and they also know that I have been considerably astonished 
at even the transient success of my works, never having flat- 
tered any one person or party, and having expressed opinions 
which are not those of readers in general. If I could have 
guessed the high degree of attention that has been awarded 
to them, I should certainly have made all possible efibrts to 
merit it. But I have lived abroad, in distant countries, or 
else in the midst of worldly dissipation in England : circum- 
stances by no means favorable to study and reflection. So 
that almost all I have written is but passion ; for in me (if it 
is not Irishism to say so) indifierence itself was a sort of pas- 
sion, the result of experience and not the philosophy of na- 
ture." 

The same contempt, manifested in a thousand ways 
throughout his life, was again expressed by Lord Byron, a 
few days before his death, to Lord Harrington, on being told 



376 The Modesty of Lord Byron. 

by the latter that, notwithstanclmg the war he had waged 
against English prejudices and national susceiDtibility, he 
had nevertheless been the pride and even the idol of his 
country. 

" Oh !" exclaimed he, " it would be a stupid race that 
should adore such an idol. It is true, they laid aside their 
superstition, as to my divinity, after ' Cain.' " 

We find in his memoranda, with regard to a comj)arison 
made between himself and Napoleon, these significant words : 
" I, an insect, comj^ared to that creature !"* 

Sometimes he ascribes his poetical success to accidental 
causes, or else to some merit not personal to himself but 
transmitted by inheritance ; that is, to his rank. 

The generality of authors, especially poets, love to read 
their productions over and over again, just as a fine woman 
likes to admire herself in the glass. He, on the contrary, 
avoided this reflection of his genius, which seemed to dis- 
please him. 

" Here are two wretched proof-sheets from the printer. I 
have looked over one ; but, on ray soul, I can not read that 
' Giaour ' again — at least not now and at this hour (mid- 
night) ; yet there is no moonlight." 

He never read his compositions to any one. On inviting 
Moore to Newstead Abbey, soon after having made his ac- 
quaintance, he said, "I can promise you Balnea Vina, and, if 
you like shooting, a manor of four thousand acres, fire, books, 

full liberty. H , I fear, will pester you with verses, but, 

for my part, I can conclude with Martial, ' nil recitabo tibi; 
and certainly this last promise ought not to be the least 
tempting for you." 

Nevertheless, this was a great moment for a young author, 
as " Childe Harold " was then going through the press. He 
never would speak of his works ; and when any translation 
of them was mentioned to him, they were sui*e to cause an- 
noyance to him. Several times in Italy he paid large sums 
to prevent his works from being translated, at the same time 
not to injure the translator ; but while refusing these hom- 
ages for himself he desired them for others, and with that 
view praised and assisted them. We have already seen all 

* Jloore, vol. i. p. 512. 



The Modesty of Lord Byron. 877 

he did to magnify Moore, as well as others, both friends and 
rivals. The Gospel says, " Do unto others as ye would they 
should do unto you ;" but for him the precept should rather 
have been reversed thus, " Do for yourself what you would 
do for others." 

In the midst of his matrimonial sufferings, at the most 
cruel moments of his existence, he still found time to write 
and warmly recommend to his publisher works written by 
Hunt and Coleridge, who afterward rewarded all his kind- 
ness with the most dire ingratitude. And after praising 
them greatly, he adds, speaking of one of his own works, 
"And now let us come to the last, my own, of which I am 
ashamed to speak after the others. Publish it or not, as you 
like ; I don't care a straw about it. If it seems to you that 
it merits a place in the fourth volume, put it there, or any- 
where else ; and if not, throw it into the fire." This poem, 
so despised, was the " Siege of Corinth !" 

About the same time, on leai-ning that Jeffrey had lauded 
" Hebrew Melodies " — poems so much above all praise that 
one might believe them (said a great mind lately)* thought 
by Isaiah and written by Shakspeare — Lord Byron consider- 
ed Jeffrey very kind to have been so indulgent. 

With what simijlicity or contempt does he always intro- 
duce his chefs-(VceunrL\ either by dedication to his friends, or 
to his publisher. 

" I have put in press a devil of a story or tale, called the 
' Corsair.' It is of a pirate island, peopled with my own 
creatures, and you may easily imagine that they will do a 
host of wicked things, in the course of three cantos." 

And this devil of a story or tale had numberless editions. 
Several thousand copies were sold in one day. We have al- 
ready seen the modest terms in which he announced to his 
friend Moore the termination of his poem " Manfred." This 
is how he mentioned it to his jDublisher : — 

" I forgot to mention to you that a kind of poem in dia- 
logue (in blank verse), or drama, from which the translation 
is an extract, begun last summer in Switzerland, is finished ; 
it is in three acts, but of a very wild, metaphysical, and inex- 
plicable kind. Byron." 

* The present Deaa of Westminster. 



378 The Modesty of Lord Byron. 

He describes to Murray the causes, aud adds : — 

" You may perceive by this outline that I have no great 
opinion of this i:)iece of fantasy ; but I have at least render- 
ed it quite impossible for the stage, for which my intercourse 
with Drury Lane has given me the greatest contempt. 

" I have not even copied it off, and feel too lazy at present 
to attempt the whole ; but Avhen I have, I will send it to 
you, and you may either throw it into the fire or not. 

"I have really and truly no notion Avhether it is good or 
bad, and as this was hot the case with the principal of my 
former publications, I am, therefore, inclined to rank it very 
humbly. You will submit it to Mr. Gifford, and to whom- 
soever you please besides. With regard to the question of 
copyright (if it ever comes to publication), I do not know 
whether you Avould think three hundred guineas an over-esti- 
mate, if you do you may diminish it. I do not think it worth 
more. Byron.* 

" Venice, March 9, 1817." 

Lord Byron never protested against or complained of any 
criticism as to the talent displayed in his works. His 
protests (much too rare, alas !) never had any other object 
than to repel some abominable calumny. When they criti- 
cised Avithout good faith and without measure his beautiful 
dramas, saying they Avere not adapted for the stage, what 
did he reply ? 

" It appears that I do not possess dramatic genius." 

His observations on that wicked and unmerited article in 
"Blackwood's Magazine" for 1819, are quite a chef-d'oeuvre 
of reasoning and modesty. There again, if he defends the 
man a little, he condemns the poet. 

His modesty was such that he almost went so far as to see, 
in the enmity stirred up against him during his latter years, 
a symptom of the decay of his talent. He really seemed to 
attach value to his genius only when it could be enlisted in 
the service of his heart. 

Li 1821, being at Ravenna, and writing his memoranda, lie 
recalls that one day in London (1814), just as he was stepping 
into a carriage Avith Moore (whom he calls with all his heart 

* Moore, Letter 2G5. 



The Modesty of Lord Byron. 379 

the poet par excellence)^ he received a Java Gazette, sent by- 
Murray, and that on looking over it, he found a discussion 
on his merits and those of Moore. And, after some modest 
amusing sentences, he goes on to say : — 

" It was a great fame to be named with Moore ; greater 
to be compared with him ; greatest pleasure^ at least, to be 
vnth him ; and, surely, an odd coincidence, that we should be 
dining together while they were quarrelling about us be- 
yond the equinoctial line. Well, the same evening, I met 
Lawrence the painter, and heard one of Lord Grey's daugh- 
ters (a fine, tall, spirited-looking girl, with much of the patri- 
cian thorough-bred look of her father, which I dote upon) 
play on the harp, so modestly and ingenuously, that she look- 
ed music. Well, I would rather have had my talk with Law- 
rence (who talked delightfully) and heard the girl, than have 
had all the fame of Moore and me put together. The only 
pleasure of fame is that it paves the way to pleasure ; and 
the more intellectual our pleasure, the better for the pleasure 
and for us too."* 

This modesty sometimes even carried him so far as to lead 
him into most extraordinary appreciation of things. For in- 
stance, he almost thought it blamable to have one's own bust 
done in marble, unless it were for the sake of a friend. Ap- 
ropos of a young American who came to see him at Raven- 
na, and Avho told him he was commissioned by Thorwaldsen 
to have a copy of his bust made and sent to America, Lord 
Byron wrote in his journal : — 

"Z would not pay the price of a Thorwaldsen bust for any 
human head and shoulders, except Napoleon's, or my chil- 
dren's or some absurd loomankimVs, as Monkbarns calls them, 
or my sister's. If asked why, then, I sat for my own ? 
Answer, that it was at the particular request of J. C. Hob- 
house, Esq., and for no one else. A picture is a different mat- 
ter ; every body sits for their picture ; but a bust looks like 
putting up 2)retensions to permanency^ and smacks something 
of a hankering for public fame rather than private remem- 
brance.'''' 

Let us add to all these proofs of Lord Byron's modesty, 
that his great experience of men and things, the doubts in- 

* Moore, vol. v. p. 76. 



380 The Modesty of Lokd Byrox. 

separable from deep learning, and his indulgence for human 
Aveakness, rendered his reason most tolerant in its exigencies, 
and that he never endeavored to impose his opinions on 
others. But Avhile remaining essentially a modest genius. 
Lord Byron did not, however, ignore his own value. If he 
had doubted himself, if he had wanted a just measure of con- 
fidence in his genius, could he have found in his soul the ener- 
gy necessary for accomplishing in a few years such a marvel- 
lous literary career ? His modesty did not proceed from con- 
scious inferiority with regard to others. 

Could the intellect that caused him to appreciate others 
so well fail to make him feel his OAvn great superiority? 
But that relative superiority Avhich he felt in himself left him 
jyerfecthj modest, or he knew it Avas subject to other relations 
that showed it to hii^r in extreme littleness : that is to say, 
the relation of the finite with the aspiration toward the in- 
finite. It was the appreciation of the immense distance ex- 
isting between what we knoAv and Avhat Ave ignore, between 
Avhat Ave arc and Avhat avc Avould be ; the consciousness, in 
fact, of the limits imposed by God on man, and Avhich nei- 
ther study nor excellence of faculties can ever enable us to 
pass beyond. 

Those rare beings, whose greatness of soul equals their 
penetration of mind, can not themselves feel the fiiscination 
they exercise o\'er others ; and Avhile performing miracles of 
genius, dcA^otion, and heroism, remain admirably simple, nat- 
ural, and modest, believing that they do not outstej) the hum- 
blest limits. 

Such Avas Lord Byron. We may then siam up by saying 
that he was not only a modest genius, but also that, instead 
of being too jH-oiid of his genius, he may rather be accused 
of having too little appreciated this great gift, as Avell aslnany 
others bestoAved by Heaven. 



The Virtues of hk Soul. 381 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE VIRTUES OF HIS SOUL. 
HIS GENEKOSITY A VIKTUE. 

All that we have hitherto said, proves that Lord Byron's 
generosity has never been disputed ; but the generosity usually 
attributed to hira was an innate quality, the impulse of a good 
heart, naturally inclined to bestow benefits. 

Certainly, to distribute among the poor our superfluities, 
and very often more than that, to borrow rather than suffer 
the unfortunate to wait for assistance ; to subtract from our 
pleasures, and even to bear privations, the better to help all 
the afflicted, without distinction of opinion, age, or sex ; to 
measure the kindness done rather by their wants, than our 
own resources, and to do all that, Avithout ostentation, habit- 
ually, in secret and unknown, with God and our conscience 
for sole witnesses : certainly, all that is full of moral beauty ; 
and we know on what a large scale Lord Byron jiracticed it 
all his life. We have seen him in childhood, of Avhich we 
should vainly seek one more amiable and more admirable, wish 
to take upon himself the punishments destined for his com- 
rades ; rescue their hall from the senseless fury of his school- 
fellows, by showing them the dear names of their parents 
written on the walls ; desire to expose himself to death, to save 
a comrade, who had two parents to regret his loss, while he 
himself had only one ; and send his good nurse the first wateh 
of Avhich he became possessed, — and we know what a treasure 
the first watch is to a child. We have followed hira later, a 
youth at college, at the university, and at Newstead, in his 
devoted passionate affections ; a young man on his travels, 
and in the midst of the great world, and we have seen his com- 
passion for every kind of misfortune, and his mode of assuag- 
ing them. 

When Ave perceive, despite the ardor and mobility of his 



382 The Virtues of his Soul. 

heart, where so many contrary elements combined, contra- 
dicted, jarred against, or succeeded each other, that there 
never was a single instant in his life when generosity did not 
reign supreme over every impulse and consideration, not only 
are we comi^elled to pronounce him generous, but we are like- 
wise forced to acknowledge that generosity, Avith a passion 
for truth, divided the empire of his soul, and formed the two 
principal features of his character. But if his generosity had 
ended in only satisfying the fine tendencies of his nature, 
would it have acquired the right to be called virtuous ? We 
do not think so. For generosity, to merit that sacred epithet, 
must express sentiments rarer and more elevated, arrive at the 
highest triumph of moral strength, at the greatest self-abne- 
gation ; it must succeed in overcoming appetite, in forgetting 
the most just resentments, in returning good for evil. Then, 
alone, can generosity attain that sublime degree which entitles 
it to be called a virtue. 

Did Lord Byron's generosity reach this great moral height ? 
Let us examine facts ; they alone can answer. 

If a young man lends assistance to a young and beautiful 
girl, without any interested motive, and with exquisite deli- 
cacy, he certainly gives proof that he possesses delicacy of soul. 
His merit becomes much greater if he acts thus solely to save 
her honor. But if the young girl, full of gratitude, falls deejily 
in love Avith her benefactor ; if, unable to hide the impression 
produced on her heart by his presence and his generosity, she 
makes him iinderstand that her gratitude would have no lim- 
its ; and if he, at the age when passion is all awake, though 
touched by the sentiments this charming person has conceived, 
nevertheless shuts his senses against all temptations, docs not 
the greatness of his soul then become admirable ? Well, this 
was fully realized in Loi-d Byron. And not only in a sin- 
gle instance ; but often during his life. For, if temptations 
were numerous, so were victories also. We will only quote 
one example, with sufficient details to make it justly 'appre- 
ciated. 

Miss S , who had been bred in ease, but who, with her 

family, had been reduced, through a series of misfortunes, to 
absolute Avant, found herself exposed to the greatest evil that 
can menace a portionless girl. Her mother, whose temper 



The Virtues of his Soul. 383 

had been soured by reverses which had likewise quite over- 
thrown her sense of morality, had become one of those women 
who consider poverty the worst of all evils. Unscrupulous as 
to the means of putting an end to it, she did not think it nec- 
essary to fortify hei- daughter's mind by good counsels. Hap- 
pily the young girl had lofty sentiments and natural dignity. 
Secure from vulgar seduction, and guided by wholesome 
steady principles, she desired to depend only on her talents 
for gaining a livelihood, and for assisting her parents. Hav- 
ing written a small volume of poetry, she had already got sub- 
scriptions from persons of high position ; but her great desire 
was to obtain Lord Byron's name. 

An impulse, often recurring, induced her to apply to the 
young nobleman, who was then still immarried. She only 
knew him through his works, and by rej)ort, which already 
associated with admiration for his talents a thousand calum- 
nies concerning his moral character. The skeptical stanzas 
of " Childe Harold " still troubled orthodox repose ; the lines 
on the tears of the Princess Royal irritated the Tories, and 
his last success with the " Corsair," added to those he had al- 
ready gained, further embittered his jealous rivals. Thus 
calumnies made up from these different elements besieged the 
poet's house, so as to prevent truth concerning the man from 
being known. Even in her family, Miss S found hostili- 
ty against him ; for her mother, who called herself a Tory, 
only discovered moral delicacy when she wished to show her 
repugnance for the Whig party, to which Lord Byron belong- 
ed. Miss S , in a moment of extreme anguish and press- 
ing embarrassment, resolved upon applying to the young no- 
bleman. He received her with respect and consideration, and 
soon perceived how intimidated she was by the rather bold 
step she had taken, and also by the cause that promjDted it. 
Lord Byron reassured her, by treating her with peculiar kind- 
ness, as he questioned her respecting her circumstances. 
When she had related the sad reasons that determined her to 
ask him for a subscription, Lord Byron rang for his valet, and 
ordered a desk to be brought to him. Then, with that deli- 
cacy of heart which formed such a remarkable trait in his 
character, he wrote down, while still conversing, a few words, 
which he wrapped up in an envelope, and gave to the young 



384 The Virtues of his Soul. 

lady. She soon after withdrew, thinking she had obtained 
the coveted subscription. 

When fairly out, all she had seen and heard aj^peared to 
her like a dream. The door which had just closed behind 
her seemed the gate of Eden, opening on a land of exile. 
Nevertheless, she was to see him again. He had consented 
to receive her volume. Lord Byron Avas not for her the an- 
gel with the flaming sword, but rather an angel of gentleness, 
mercy, and love. Never had she seen or imagined such a 
combinatioiT of enchantments ; never had she seen so much 
beauty, nor lieard such a voice ; never had such a sweet ex- 
pressive glance met hers. "No;" she repeated to herself, 
"he is not a man, but some celestial being. Oh, mamma. 
Lord Byron is an angel r were the first words that escaped 
her on returning home. The envelope was opened ; and a 
new surprise awaited them. Together Avith his subscription, 
she found, Avrapped up, fifty pounds. That sum Avas, indeed, 
a treasure for her. She fell on her knees with all her family ; 
even her mother forgot for the moment that it Avas Whig 
money to Avhich they OAved their deliverance, and seemed al- 
most to agree Avith her eldest daughter, Avhose enthusiasm 
communicated itself to the younger one, Avho never Avearied 
in questioning her sister about Lord Byron's perfections, un- 
til the night was far spent. 

But if the family Avas thus relieved, if the young girl's 
honor Avas safe, her peace of mind Avas gone. The contempt 
and dislike she already felt for scA'eral men Avho Avere hover- 
ing about her Avith alarming offers of protection, Avere noAv 
further increased by the comparison she AA'as enabled to make 
between their vulgar and Ioav, basely hypocritical or openly 
licentious natures, and that of the noble being she had just 
seen. 

Thenceforth Byron's dazzling image ncA'er left her mind. 
It remained fixed there during the day, to reappear at night 
in her dreams and visions. Such a hold had it gained over 

her entire being, that Miss S seemed from that hour to 

liA-e heart and soul only in the hope of seeing him again. 

When she returned to take him her book, she found that 
she had to add to all the other charms of this supei'ior being 
that respect Avhicli the Avisdom of mature age seems only able 



The Virtues of his Soul. 385 

to inspire. For he not only spoke to her of what might best 
suit her position, and disapproved some of her mother's proj- 
ects, as dangerous for her honor, but even refused to go and 
see her as she requested ; nor would he give her a letter of 
introduction to the Duke of Devonshire, simply because a 
handsome girl could not be introduced by a young man with- 
out having her reputation compromised. 

The more Miss S saw of Lord Byron, the more intense 

her passion for him became. It seemed to her that all to 
which heart could aspire, all of happiness that heaven could 
give here below, must be found in the love of such a pre- 
eminent being. Lord Byron soon perceived the danger of 

these visits. Miss S was beautiful, witty, and charming ; 

Lord Byron was twenty-six years of age. How many young 
men, in a similar case, would not without a scruple have 
thought that he had only to cull this flower which seemed 
voluntarily to tempt him ? Lord Byron never entertained 
such an idea. Innocent of all intentional seduction, unable to 
render her happy, even if he could have returned her senti- 
ments, instead of being proud of having inspired them, he 
was distressed at having done so. He did not wish to prove 
the source of new misfortunes to this young girl, already so 
tried by fate, and without guide or counsellor. So he resolved 
to use all his efforts toward restoring her peace. It would 
be too long to tell the delicate mode he used to attain this 
end, the generous stratagems he employed to heal this poor 
wounded heart. He went so far as to try to appear less 
amiable. For the sake of destroying any hope, he assumed a 
cold, stern, troubled air ; but on perceiving that he had only 
aggravated the evil, his kindliness of heart could resist no 
longer, and he hit on other expedients. Finally he succeeded 
in making her comprehend the necessity of putting an end to 
her visits. She left his house, having ever been treated with 
respect, the innocence of their mutual intercourse unstained ; 
and the young man's sacrifice only permitted one kiss imprint- 
ed on the lovely brow of her whose strong feelings for himself 
he well knew. 

What this victoiy, gained by his will and his sentiment as 
a man of honor over his senses and his heart, cost Lord By- 
ron, has remained his own secret. But those who will imag- 

R 



386 The Virtues of his Soul. 

ine themselves in similar circumstances at the age of twenty- 
six, may conceive it. As to Miss S , the excess of her 

emotions made her ih ; and she long hung between life and 
death. Nevertheless, the strength of youth j)rev ailed, and 
ended by giving her back physical health. But was her 
mind equally cured ? The only light that had brightened her 
path had gone out, and, plunged in darkness, how did she 
pursue her course through life? Was her heart henceforth 
closed to every affection ? Or did she chain it down to the 
fulfillment of some austere duty, that stood her in lieu of hap- 
piness ? Or, as it sometimes happens to stricken hearts, did a 
color, a sound, a breeze, one feature in a face, call up hallucina- 
tions, give her vain longings, make her build fresh hopes and 
prepare for her new deceptions? Proof against all mean- 
nesses, but young and most unhappy, was she always able to 
resist the promptings of a warm, feeling, grateful heart ? "We 
are ignorant of all this. We only know of her, that never 
again in her long cai-eer did she meet united in one man that 
profusion of gifts, physical, intellectual, and moral, that made 
Lord Byron seem like a being above huinanity. She tells it 
to us herself, in letters written at the distance that separates 
1814 from 1864, lately published in French, preceding and 
accompanying a narrative composed in her own language, in 
which she has related her impressions of Lord Byron, and 
given the details of all that took place between her and him. 
It was a duty, she says, that remained for her to accomplish 
here below. 

Her narrative and these letters are charnaing from their 
simplicity and naivete ; what she says bears the stamp of plain 
truth, her admiration has nothing high-flov\'n in it, and her 
style is never Avanting in the sobriety which ought always to ac- 
company truth, in order to make it penetrate into other minds. 

We would fain transcribe these pages, that evidently flow 
from an elevated and sincerely grateful heart. For they re- 
flect great honor on Lord Byron, since, in showing the strength 
of the impression made on the young girl, they bring out 
more fully all the self-denial he must have exercised in regard 
to her ; likewise, because, in her letters, this lady, after so 
long an experience of life, never ceases jDroclaiming Lord By- 
ron the handsomest, the most generous, and the best of men 



The Virtues of his Soul. 387 

sliG evei' knew. But though it is impossible for me to repro- 
duce all she says, still I feel it necessary to quote some pas- 
sages from her book. In the first letter addressed to Mrs. 
B , she says : — 

"At the moment of the separation between Lord Byron 
and that woman who caused the misery of his life, I was not 
in London ; and I was so ill, that I could neither go to see 
him nor Avrite as I wished. For he had shown me so much 
goodness and generosity that my heart was bursting with 
gratitude and soitow ; and never have I had any means of 
expressing either to him, except through my little oifering.* 
Even now my heart is breaking at the thought of the injus- 
tice with which he has been treated. 

" His frieild Moore, to whom he had confided his memoirs, 
written with his own hand, had not the courage to fulfill faith- 
fully the desire of his generous friend. Lady Blessington 
made a book upon him very profitable to herself, but in which 
she does not always jDaiut Lord Byron en beau, and where she 
has related a thousand things that Lord Byron only meant in 
joke, and which ought not to have been either written or pub- 
lished. And when it is remembered that this lady (as I am 
assured) never saw or conversed with Lord Byron but out of 
doors, when she happened to meet him on horseback, and 
very rarely (two or three times) when he consented to dine at 
her house, in both of these cases, in too nmnerous a company 
for the conversation to be of an intimate nature ; when it is 
known (as I am further assured) that Lord Byron was so 
much on his guard with this lady (aware of her being an au- 
thoress), that he never accepted an invitation to dine with 
her, unless when his friend Count Gamba did : truly, we may 
then conclude that these conversations were materially imj^os- 
sible, and must have been a clever mystification, — a composi- 
tion got up on the biographies of Lord Byron that had al- 
ready appeared, on Moore's works, Medwin's, Lord Byron's 
correspondence, and, above all, on "Don Juan." She must 
have made her choice, without any regard to truth or to Lord 
Byron's honor; rather selecting such facts, expressions, and 
observations as allowed her to assume the part of a moral, 

* She had dedicated to him a small collection of poems, -which she sent to 
Pisa, in 1821, with a letter, to which she received no ansiar. 



388 The Virtues of his Soul. 

sensitive Avoman, to sermonize, by way of gaining favor with 
the strict set of people in high society, and to be able to bring 
out her own opinions on a number of things and j^ersons, 
without fear of compromising herself, since she put them into 
Lord Byron's mouth. 

" Verily these conversations can not be explained in any 
other way. At any rate, I confess this production of her 
ladyship so displeased me that I threw it aside, unable to read 
it without ill-humor and disgust. At that time (1814) he 
was not married ; and I beheld in him a young man of the 
rarest beauty. Superior intellect shone in his countenance ; 
his manners were at once full of simplicity and dignity ; his 
voice was sweet, rich, and melodious. If Lord Byron had de- 
fects (and who has not ?) he also j^ossessed very great virtues, 
with a dignity and sincerity of character seldom to be found. 
The more I have known the world, the more have I rendered 
homage to Lord Byron's memory." 

Miss S wrote thus to a person with whom she was not 

acquainted ; but, encouraged by the answer she received, she 
dispatched a second letter, opening her heart still further, and 
sending some details of her intercourse with Lord Byron, — 
what she had seen and known of him. 

"Ah ! madam," she exclaims, " if you knew the happiness, 
the consolation I feel in writing to you, knowing that all I say 
of him will be well received, and that you believe all these de- 
tails so creditable to him !" 

In the same letter, she declares " that when he was exposed 
to the attacks of jealousy and a thousand calumnies spread 
against him, he always said, ' Do not defend me.' 

" But, madam, how can we be silent when we hear such in- 
famous things said against one so incapable of them ? I have 
always said frankly w^hat I thought of him, and defended him 
in such a way as to carry conviction into the mindS of those 
who heard me. But a combat between one person and many 
is not equal, and I have several times been ill with vexation. 
Never mind ; what I can do, I will." 

She announced her intention of communicating the whole 
history of her acquaintance with Lord Byron. 

" I am about to commence, madam, the account of my ac- 
quaintance with our great and noble poet, I shall write all 



.The Virtues of his Soul. 889 

concerning him in English, because I can thus make use of 
his own words, which are graven in my heart, as well as all 
the circumstances relating to him, I will give you these de- 
tails, madam, in all their simiilicity ; but their value consists 
less in the words he made use of, than in the manner accom- 
panying them, in the sweetness of his voice, his delicacy and 
politeness at the moment when he was granting a favor, ren- 
dering me such a great service. Oh ! yes, he was really good 
and generous ; never, in all my long years, have I seen a man 
vwrthij to he compared to him.'''' 

She wn-ote again on the 10th of November, 1864 : — 

"Here, madam, are the details I j^romised you about my 
first interview with Lord Byron. I give them to you in all 
their simplicity. I make no attempt at style ; but simply tell 
unvarnished truth ; for, with regard to Lord Byron, I consider 
truth the most important thing, — his name is the greatest or- 
nament of the page whereon it is inscribed. I will also send 
you, madam, if you desire, ray second and third interview with 
this noble, admirable man, who was so 'inUjudged. To Avrite 
this history is a great happiness for me ; since I know that, in 
so doing, I render him that justice so often denied him by the 
envious and the wicked. 

" His conduct toward me ^vas always so beautiful and no- 
ble, that I would fain make it known to the whole world. I 
think they are beginning to render him the justice that is his 
due ; everywhere noAV he is quoted — Byron said this, Byron 
thought that — that is what I hear continually, and many perr 
sons who formerly spoke against liim, now testify in his favor. 

" They say we ought not to speak evil of the dead ; that is 
very well, but as this maxim was not observed toward Lord 
Byron, I also will repeat what I have heard said of his wife — 
I mean that the blame was hers — that her temper was so bad, 
her manners so harsh and disagreeable, that no one could en- 
dure her society ; that she was avaricious, wicked, scolding ; 
that people hated to wait upon her or liva near her. How 
dared this lady to marry a man so distinguished, and then to 
treat him ill and tyrannically ? Truly it is inconceivable. If 
she were chaiitable for the poor (as some one has pretended), 
she certainly wanted Christian charity. And I also am want- 
ing in it perhaps ; but, when I think of her, I lose all patience." 



390 The Virtues of his Soul^ 

On announcing to Mrs. B the sequel of licr narrative, 

she says : — 

"It contains the history of tlie two days that passed after 
my first interview with him Avhom I ever found the noblest 
and most generous of men, whose memory Hves in ray heart 
hke a brilliant star amid the dark and gloomy clouds that 
liave often surrounded me in life; it is the single ray of sun- 
shine illumining ray remembrances of the past." 

Miss S had not forgotten a look, a Avord, not even the 

material external part- of things ; and when Mrs. B ex- 
pressed her astonishment at this lively recollection, — 

"All that concerned Lord Byron," said she, " has been re- 
tained by my heart. I recall his words, gestures, looks, now, 
as if it had all taken place yesterday. I believe this is owing 
to his great and beautiful qualities, such a rare assemblage of 
which I never saw in any other human being. 

" There was so much truth in all he said, so much simplic- 
ity in all he did, that every thing became indelibly engraven 
on heart and memory." 

After having said that Lord Byron gave her the best counsels, 
and among others that of living with her mother (" not know- 
ing," she adds, " to what it would expose rae "), she continues : 

" You say, madam, there is no cause for astonishment that 
I so admire and respect Lord Byron. In all he said, or ad- 
vised, there was so much right reason, goodness and judg- 
ment far above his age, that one remained enthralled." 

On sending the conclusion of her history to Mrs. B , she 

says : — 

" You who knew Lord Byron, will not be surprised that I 
loved him so much. But a woman does not pass through such 
a trial with impunity. On returning home, I threw rayself on 
my knees and tried to j^ray, implormg Heaven for strength 
and patience. But the sound of his voice, his looks, pierced to 
ray very heart, my soul felt torn asunder ; I could not even 
weep. For two years and a half I was no longer myself. A 
man of high position offered me his hand. He wovild have 
placed me in the first society ; but he wished for love, and I 
could only ofEer him friendship." 

And, finally, when the reception of the concluding part of 
her narrative was acknowledged, she further added : — 



The Virt.ues of his Soul. 391 

" I ain very glad that the history of my heart appears to 
you a precious document for proving the virtues of one Avhom 
I have ever looked upon as the first of men, as icell for his 
qualities as for his genius.''^ 

Her last letter ends exactly as did her first : — '^Ah ! there 
never was hut one Lord Byron /" In her narrative, which is 
quite as natural in style as her letters, no detail of her inter- 
views with Lord Byron has escaped her memory.* 

We have already seen how, in a moment of despair, the 
young girl, full of confidence in Lord Byron, whom she consid- 
ered as one of the noblest characters that ever existed, thought 
she might go and ask his protection. A fashionalble young 
man, and still unmarried, the reports current about him might 
well lead to the belief that his house was not quite the temple 
of order. She was surprised on knocking timidly at his door, 
on explaining to the valet-de-chamhre Avho opened it, her great 
desire to sj^eak to Lord Byron, to see Fletcher listen to her with 
a civil, compassionate air, that predisposed her in favor of his 
master. 

He conducted her into a small room, where all Lord Byron's 
servants were assembled, and there also she was greatly sur- 
prised at the order and simplicity in the establishment of the 
young lord. 

" I never saw servants more polite and respectful," says 
she. " Fletcher and the coachman remained standing, only the 
old house-keeper kept her seat." 

Miss S had dried her tears when admitted into Lord 

Byron's presence. 

" Surprise and admiration," says she, " were the first emo- 
tions I experienced on seeing him. He was only twenty-six 
years of age, but he looked still younger. I had been told that 
he was gloomy, severe, and often out of temper : I Saw, on the 
contrary, a most attractive physiognomy, wearing a look of 
charming sioeetness.'''' 

Miss S soon found cause tg a^jpreciate Lord Byron's 

deUcacy. She began by excusing herself for having come to 
him, saying she had taken this step in consequence of family 
misfortunes. She remained standing. After some moments 

* "All that," says she, "lives in mj' heart and soul, as if these things had 
taken place a few weeks ago, instead of so many years" (1864). 



392 The Virtues of his Soul. 

of silence, during which Lord Byron appeared to interrogate 
memory, he said : — 

" Pray be seated ; I will not hear another word until you 
are. You appear to have an indej)endent spirit, and this step 
must have cost you much." 

Having already j^artly seen tlie results of this interview, we 
refrain from giving further details here, although they are full 
of interest on account of the goodness, generosity, and delicacy 
they reveal. 

Miss S endeavored to draw his portrait, but the pencil 

dropped from her hands : — 

" I feel that unless I could portray his look, and repeat his 
words as pronounced by him, I could not even do justice to his 
actions." 

She does it, however in a few bold touches which, on ac- 
count of their truth, we have quoted in the chapter entitled 
Portrait of Lord Byron. 

After having said that it was impossible to see finer eyes, 
a more beautiful expression of face, manners more graceful, 
hands more exquisite, or to hear such a tone of voice, she adds : 

"All that formed such an assemblage of seductive qualities, 
that never before or since have I remarked any man who could 
be comj^ared to him. What particularly struck me was the se- 
rene, gentle dignity of his manner. Lady Blessington says, that 
she did not find in Lord Byron quite the dignity she had ex- 
pected; but surely, then, she does not undei'stand Avhat digni- 
ty is? Indeed she did not understand Lord Byron at all. 
With me he was unaffected, amiable, and natural. The hours 
passed in his society I look upon as the brightest of my life, 
and even now I think of them with an effusion of gratitude 
and admiration, rather increased than diminished by time." 

Lord Byron saw directly that Miss S had a noble na- 
ture. It must have been such ; it must even have been, so to 
say, incorruptible^ since she had been able to preserve her pu- 
rity of soul and simplicity in the position to which she was, 
despite her surroundings and with such a mother. Lord By- 
ron, seeing her so unprotected and ill-advised, took an interest 
in her, and instead of profiting by her isolation, resolved to 
save her. With virtue superior to his years, he opposed the 
best counsels to the more than imprudent projects of a 



The Virtues of his Soul. 893 

mother Avlio thought only of repairing her fortune by what- 
ever means. Miss S , attracted toward him Avith her whole 

heart and soul, begged her young and noble benefactor to come 
and see her, if it were only once* a month. " I should be so 
happy, my lord, if you Avould sometimes grant me the favor 
of a visit, and guide my life," said she to him. 

But Lord Byron had perceived the excited state of feeling 
in which the young girl was. Besides, he was betrothed, and 
did not wish to expose her and himself to the consequences. 
Honor and prudence alike counselled a refusal, and he refused. 

" My dear child," answered he, " I can not. I will tell you 
my present position, and yoii will understand that I ought 
not: I am going to marry." 

"At these words," said she, " my heart sunk within me, as 
if a piece of lead had fallen on my chest. At the same in- 
stant I experienced an acute pain in it. It seemed as if a 
chilly steel had pierced me. A horrible, indescribable sensa- 
tion shook my whole frame. For some moments I could not 
possibly articulate a single word. Lord Byron looked at me 
with an expression full of interest, for indeed I must have 
changed countenance." 

Lord Byron, already aware that his image was graven on 
this young heart, and might become dangerous to her, then 
understood still better the silent ravages that love must be 
making there. He pitied her more than ever, he felt the ne- 
cessity of refusal and sacrifice, and, from that moment, all 
struggle between will and desire ceased. 

He also refused, after some hesitation, to recommend her 
to the Duke of Devonshire. 

" You are young and pretty," said he, " and that is sufficient 
to place any man, wishing to serve you, in a false position. 
You know how the world understands a young man's friend- 
ship and interest for a young woman. No ; my name must 
not appear in a recommendation to the duke. Don't think me 
disobliging, therefore. On the contrary, I wish you to make 
an appeal to Devonshire, but without naming me ; I have told 
you my reasons for refusing to be openly your advocate." 

"Another time," adds she, " I ventured to express the wish 
of being presented to the future Lady Byron. But he again 
answered by a refusal. ' Though amiable and unsuspicious,' 

R 2 



394 The Virtues of his Soul. 

said he, ' persons about Lady Byron might put jealous sus- 
picions, devoid of foundation, into her head.' " 

Thus equally by what he refused her and what he granted 
her, he proved his great generosity, the elevation of his char- 
acter, his virtuous abnegation and self-control. 

Altho.ugh Miss S- was then in an humble and humilia- 
ting position, she had received a fine classical and intellectual 
education from her uncle, who was a j^rofessor at Cambridge. 
Her natural Avit, the naivete and sincerity of her ideas, im- 
contaminated by worldly knowledge, were appreciated by 
Lord Byron. He understood her worth, despite the difficul- 
ties that made virtue of greater merit in her, and notwith- 
standing appearances that were against her ; and he showed 
interest in her conversation during the different interviews 
she obtained from him. Ho talked to her of literature, the 
news of the day ; and even had the goodness to read with in- 
dulgence and approbation the verses she had composed. One 
day, among others, she had the haj^piness of remaining with 
him till a late hour, and Avhen his carriage Avas announced, to 
take him to a soiree, he had her conducted home in the same 
carriage. 

" Oh ! how delightful that evening was to me," says she. 
"Lord Byron's abode at the Albany recalled some collegiate 
dwelling, so perfectly quiet Avas it, though situated at the 
West End, tlie noisiest quarter of the metropolis. His con- 
versation so varied and delightful, the purity of his English, 
his refined pronunciation, all offered such a contrast even with 
the most distinguished men I had had the good fortune to 
meet, that I really learned what happiness was." 

These conversations affoi'ded her the opportunity of know- 
ing and admiring him still more. In conversing on literature, 
she was able to appreciate his modesty by the praises he lav- 
ished on the talents of others, and by the slight importance he 
attached to his own ; and also his love of truth when, d pj^opos 
of some book of travels she was praising, he told her that he 
preferred a simple but true tale of voyages to all the i:)omp of 
lies. In speaking about an adventure in high life that was 
then making a great noise in England, she was able to appre- 
ciate his high sentiments of delicacy and honor. "When the 
conversation fell on religion, she had the happiness of hearing 



The Virtues of his Soul. 395 

ing him declare lie abhorred atheism and unbelief; and when 
his childhood was touched upon, of hearing him say that it 
had been pleasant and happy. Finally, when she asked his 
advice with regard to her future conduct, lie displayed, at 
twenty-six years of age, the wisdom that seldom comes be- 
fore the advent of gray hairs. In short, by word and by ac- 
tion, he manifested that nobleness of soul which always un- 
veiled itself to pure open natures, but which closed against art- 
ificial ones ; and which makes Miss S say at the beginning 

as well as at the end of her account : — " There has been but 
one Byron on earth : how could I not love him ?" 

But it is especially on account of the great love she felt for 
him, on going over it, reflecting, comparing the depth of feel- 
ings she had been unable to hide from him, with the conduct of 
this young man of twenty-six, who drew from duty alone a de- 
gree of strength superior to his age and sex, that she' express- 
ed herself thus. She can still see his looks of tenderness ; 
she can judge Avhat the struggle Avas, the combat that was go- 
ing on in him as soft and stern glances chased each other ; at 
length she sees honor gain the victory, and remain triumjDhant. 

It is this spectacle of such great moral beauty, still before 
her eyes, that can be so Avell appreciated after the lapse of long 
years, and which justifies the words that begin and close her 
recital by divesting it of all semblance of exaggeration : — 
" There has been but one Byron !" 

When we have known such beings, admiration and love 
outlive all else. And while the causes that may have led to 
transient emotions in a long career — an error, a fault — pass 
nway and are forgotten like some beautiful vision, these glori- 
ous remembrances, these more than human images, tower 
above, living and radiant, in memory, and even come to visit 
us in our dreams, sometimes to reproach us with our useless 
and imprudent doubts, ever to sustain us amid the sadnesses 
of life ; and if the love has been reciprocal, then to console us 
with the prospect of another life, in that blessed abode where 
we shall meet again forever. 

After this long narrative, it would be iiseless and perhaps 
wearisome for the reader if we quoted many other similar 
facts in Lord Byron's life. They might differ in circumstan- 
ces, but Avould all wear the same moral character. 



396 Genebosity a Heroism. 



CHAPTER XV. 
GENEROSITY A HEROISM. 

PAEDON, MAGJfAISriMITY. 

It remains for us to examine Lord Byron's generosity un- 
der" another form. I mean that which, after having passed 
by different degrees of moral beauty, may reach the highest 
summit of virtue, and become the greatest triumj^h of moral 
strength, because it overcomes the most just resentments, 
forgives' returns good for evil, and constitutes the very her- 
oism of Christian charity. 

Did Lord Byron's generosity really attain such a high de- 
gree ? To convince ourselves of it, we must again examine 
his life. 

Clemency and forgivness showed themselves in Lord By- 
ron at all periods of his life. Li childhood, in yoiith, though 
so passionate, and so sensitive at school and at college, so 
soon as the first explosion was over, he was ever ready to 
make peace. 

Li the poems composed during his boyhood and early 
youth, he was always the first to forgive. He even forgave 
his wicked guardian (Lord Carlisle). Although this latter 
only evinced indiflerence, or worse, with regard to his ward. 
Lord Byron dedicated his first poems to him. The noble earl 
having farther aggravated his faults by behaving in an un- 
justifiable manner, Lord Byron was of course greatly irri- 
tated, since he hurled some satirical lines at him. But soon 
after, at the intercession of friends, and especially at that of 
his sister, he showed himself disposed to forget the faults of 
his bad guardian with all the clemency inherent to his gener- 
ous nature. He writes to Rogers, 27th June, 1814: — "Are 
there any chances or possibility of ending this, and making 
our peace with Carlisle ? I am disposed to do all that is rea- 
sonable (or unreasonable) to arrive at it. I would even have 



Generosity a Heroism. 897 

done so soonei' ; but tlie ' Coui'ier ' newspaper, and a thousand 
disagreeable interpi-etations, have prevented nie." 

Afterward, he further sealed this generous pardon by those 
fine verses in the third canto of " Childe Harold," where he 
laments the death of Major Howard, Lord Carlisle's son, kill- 
ed at Waterloo.* 

He forgave Miss Chaworth; and in this case also there 
was great generosity. The history of this boyish love is 
well known. Even if the name of love should be refused to 
the feeling entertained by a child of fifteen for a girl of eight- 
een, who only looked upon him, it is said, as a boy, and liked 
him as a brother, not only on account of the diflerence of age, 
but also because she was already attached to the young man 
whom she afterward married, still it can not be denied that 
these first awakenings of the heart, though full of illusion, 
cause great sufiering. For if Lord Byron was a child in years, 
he was already a young man in intellect, soul, imagination, 
and sensibility. That Miss Chaworth should raise emotion 
in his heart is very comprehensible, for every girl has good 
chances of appearing an angel to youths, whose preference 
invariably falls on women older than themselves. Besides, 
Miss Chaworth was placed in quite exceptional circumstan- 
ces with regard to Lord Byron, such as were well calculated 
to act powerfully on the imagination of a boy, and render 
the dispelling of his poetic dream a most painful reality. 

Miss Chaworth was heiress of the noble family whose 
name she bore, and her uncle had been killed in a duel by 
the last. Lord Byron, grand-uncle of the poet. She resided 
with her family at Annesley, a seat two miles distant from 
Newstead Abbey. Their two properties touched each oth- 
er ; but the slight barrier separating them was marked with 
blood. The two children then, despite their near vicinity, 
only saw each other by chance, or by secretly getting over 
the boundary of their respective grounds. The chief obsta- 
cle to tlie reconciliation of the two families was the young 
girl's father. But when Lord Byron reached his fourteenth 

* " Their praise is hj'mn'd by loftier hearts than mine, 

Yet one I would select from that proud throng, 
Partly because they blend me witli his line, 
And partlj' that I did his sire some wrong." 



398 Generosity a Heroism. 

year, and, according to custom, came from Harrow to pass 
his holidays at Newstead, Mr. Chaworth was dead, and the 
mother of the young heiress received him at Annesle^ witli 
open arms, for she did not partake her husband's feelings, 
but, on, the contrary, looked forward with pleasure to the 
possibility of a union with her daughter, despite the differ- 
ence of age between them. The development of their mu- 
tual sympathy was equally encouraged by the professors, 
governesses, and all surrounding the young lady, for they 
liked young Byron extremely. 

From that time he had his room at Anncsley, and was 
looked upon as one of the family. As to the young lady, 
she made him the companion of her amusements. In the 
gardens, parks, on horseback, in all excursions, he was con- 
stantly by her side. For him she 2:)layed, and sang to the 
piano. What was her love for him ? Were there not mo- 
ments in which she did not look upon him only as a brother, 
or a child ? Did she ever contemplate the possibility of be- 
coming his Avife ? 

Moore does not think so. 

" Neither is it, indeed, probable," says he, " had even her 
affections been disengaged, that Lord Byron would, at this 
time, have been selected as the object of them. A seniority 
of two years gives to a girl, ' on the eve of womanhood,' an 
advance into life with which the boy keeps no proportion- 
ate pace. Miss Chaworth looked upon Byron as a mere 
schoolboy. His manners, too, were not yet formed, and his 
great beauty was still in its promise and not developed." 

Gait is still more explicit in the same sense. Washington 
Irving appears to think the contrary : — 

" Was this love returned ?" says he. " Byron sometimes 
speaks as if it had been ; at other times he says, on the con- 
trary, that she never gave him reason to believe so. It is, 
however, probable, that at the commencement her heart ex- 
perienced at least fluctuations of feeling : she was at a dan- 
gerous age. Though a child in years. Lord Byron was al- 
ready a man in intelligence, a poet in imagination, and pos- 
sessed of great beauty." 

This opinion is the most probable. We may add that 
every thing must have contributed to keep up his illusion. 



Generosity a Heroism. 899 

Miss Chaworth gave liim her portrait, her hair, and a ring, 
Mrs. Chaworth, the governess, all the family of the young 
heiress liked him so much, that after his death, when Wash- 
ington Irving visited Annesley, he found proofs of this aftec- 
tion in the welcome given to, and the emotion caused even 
by the presence of a dog that had belonged to Lord Byron, 
This beautiful waking dream lasted, however, only the space 
of a 'dream in sleep. 

At the expiration of his six weeks' holidays, yoiing Byron 
returned to Harrow. 

While he was cherishing the sacred flame with his purest 
energies of soul, what did she ? She had forgotten him ! 
The impression made on her heart by the schoolboy's love 
could not withstand the test of absence. She gave her heart 
to another, 

" I thought myself a man," says he ; " I was in earnest, 
she was fickle." 

It was natural, however. She had arrived at the age 
when girls become Avomen, and leave their childish loves be- 
hind them. 

While young Byron was pursuing his studies. Miss Cha- 
worth mixed in society. She met with a young man, named 
Musters, remarkable for his handsome person, and whose 
l^roperty lay contiguous to her own. 

She had perceived him one day from her terrace, gallop- 
ing toward the park followed by his hounds, the horn sound- 
ing in front, and he leading a fox hunt ; she had been struck 
with his manly beauty and graceful carriage. From that 
day his image seated itself in her remembrance, and proba- 
bly in her heart. It was under these favorable auspices that 
he made her acquaintance in society. Soon he gained her 
love. And when young Byron at the next vacation saw her 
again, she was already the willing betrothed of another. 

That was still, however, a secret locked up in her heart. 
Her parents w^ould not have wished this union. She had not 
then declared her intentions, and Lord Byron could not of 
course guess them. He was still welcomed at Annesley, and 
treated as heretofore. The young lady herself, instead of re- 
pelling him, continued to accept his attentions. This lasted 
until one day when Musters was bathing witli Byron in a 



400 G-ENEROSITY A HEROISM. 

river that ran through the park he perceived a ring which 
he recognized as having belonged to Miss Chaworth. This 
discovery, and the scenes it gave rise to, obliged the lady to 
declare her preference. 

The grief this broken illusion caused Lord Byron is shown 
by some of his early verses, and by the "Dream," written at 
Geneva, while musing how different his fate might have been 
if he had married Miss Chaworth, instead 'of Miss Milbank. 
It might be objected that sorrows, the proof of which rests 
on poetry, are not very authentic, and that it is not quite 
certain they really did pass through his heart. One might 
consider with Gait that this childish sentiment was less a 
real feeling of love than the phantom of an enthusiastic at- 
tachment, quite intellectual in its nature, like others that pos- 
sessed such power over Lord Byron, since Miss Chaworth 
was not the sole object of his attention, but divided it with 
study and passionate friendships. One might say, with 
Moore, that the poetic description given by Lord Byron of 
this childish love, ought to serve especially to show how gen- 
ius and sentiment may raise the realities of life, and give 
an immense lustre to the most ordinary events and objects. 
In short, one might think that Lord Byron perceived all the 
poetic advantages accruing from the remembrance of a youth- 
ful passion, at once innocent, pure, and unhappy ; how it 
would furnish him with a magic tint to enrich his palette 
with an inexhaustible fund of sweet, graceful, and pathetic 
fancies, with delicate, lofty, and noble sentiments, and there- 
fore that he resolved to shut it up in his heart, so as to pre- 
serve its freshness amid the withering atmosphere of the 
world ; and in order to draw thence those exquisite images 
that so often shed ineffable grace and tenderness OA^er his 
poems. It may, then, be said that, by maintaining alive in 
his mind scenes passed at Annesley, which recall the chaste, 
unhappy loves of Romeo and Juliet, and Lucy, he thereby 
satisfied an intellectual want of the poet that was quite in- 
dependent of his heart as a man. 

But, nevertheless, all those who can feel the heart's beat- 
ings through the veil of poetic language will understand 
that Lord Byron's verses on Mary Chaworth owe their origin 
to real crrief 



Generosity a Heroism. 401 

Could it be otherwise ? The experience resulting from 
reflection and comparison, which made him afterward say, 
that the perfections of the girl were the creation of his im- 
agination at fifteen, because he found her in reality quite oth- 
er than angelic ;* that she was fickle, and had fleceived him. 
This experience, I say, was wanting to the child. Thus, 
then, Miss Chaworth was for him at that period the beau 
ideal of all his young fancy could paint as best and most 
charming. 

At the same time, this love, notwithstanding the diflerence 
of age, was not, on his side, the giddy result of too much 
ardor. It was composed of a thousand circumstances and 
feelings, — of practical, wise, and generous thoughts. A far- 
off* prosjiect of happiness heightened all the noble instincts 
of the boy, and all the ideas of order that belonged to his 
fine moral nature. 

To reunite two noble families, — to efface the stain of blood 
and hatred through love, — to revive again the ancient splen- 
dor of his ancestral halls, — all these thoughts mingled with 
the idea of his union with Miss Chaw^orth, and made his 
heart beat with hope. If there were excess in such hope, — , 
if there were illusion, — the fault lies with the relatives of the 
young lady and herself, rather than with him. Generosity 
was on his side alone, because he alone had a right to feel 
rancor. 

" She jilted me," says he in prose, and in verse we read, — 

" She knew she was by him beloved, — she knew, 
For quickl}'- comes such knowledge, that his heart 
Was darken'd with her shadow, and she saw 
That he was wretched." 

If, then, it was natural for a girl to prefer a young man of 
more suitable age, handsome and fashionable, to a boy whose 
features were yet undeveloped, and whom she treated as a 
child and a brother ; was it quite as natural to flatter him, — 
load him with caresses, — with those gifts likely to foster il- 
lusion and hope, — pledges considered as love tokens ? Was 
it natural that in order to justify certain coquetries to her 
affianced, she should make use of insulting expressions with 
regard to young Byron ? But, on the other hand, Avould it 

* See Medwin. 



402 Generosity a Heroism. 

not have been very natural for him, having heard them, to 
feel a little rancor against her? Surely she was guilty if 
she had spoken in jest, and more guilty still if she Avere in 
earnest. 

And yet "sxli^t was his conduct ? In his poem called the 
" Dream," where he sings this romance of his boyhood, he 
tells us how he quitted Annesley, after having learned that 
Miss Chaworth Avas engaged to Mr. Musters : — 

" He rose, and with a cold and gentle grasp 
He took her hand ; a moment o'er his face 
A tablet of unutterable thoughts 
Was traced, and then it faded, as it came ; 
He dropped the hand he held, and with slow steps 
Retired, but not as bidding her adieu, 
For they did part with mutual smiles ; he pass'd 
From out the massy gate of that old hall. 
And mounting on his steed he went his way; 
And ne'er repass'd that hoary threshold more." 

Then he jumped upon his horse, intending to gallop over 
the distance separating Annesley from Newstead. But when 
he arrived at the last hill overlooking Annesley, he stopped 
, his horse, and cast a glance of mingled sorrow and tenderness 
at what ho left behind, — the groves, the old house, the love- 
ly one inhabiting there. But then the thought that she 
could never be his dispelled his reverie, and putting spurs to 
his horse he set off anew, as if rapid motion could drown re- 
flection. However, instead of the reflections he could not 
succeed in drowning, he cast mcay all rancor. 

^\"hen he alludes to her in his early poems it is always 
Avith tenderness and respect.* He contents himself with 
calling her once, deceitful girl, and another i\me,a false fair 
face. 

After an interval of some years, when the boy had become 
a fine young man, before setting out for the East, he accept- 
ed the proffered hospitality of Annesley. 

* "In the shade of her bower, I remember the hour 

She rewarded those vows with a Tear. 

B}' another possest, may she live ever blest! 

Her name still my heart must revere; 
With a sigh I resign what I once thought was mine. 

And forgive her deceit with a Tear." 

''The Tear'' (October, 180G). 



Generosity a Heroism. 403 

He never ce.ased to welcome Musters at Newsteacl, and, 
lest he should disturb the-peace of Mrs. Musters, he had even 
concealed his agitation on kissing his rival's child. Hereto- 
fore she had only seen the boy or youth, now she beheld the 
young man whose genius and pei'sonal attractions lent to 
each other light and charm. 

It was about this time that the bright star of Annesley 
began to pale. On her brow, formerly so gay, a veil of sad- 
ness was overspread. It seemed as if the gardens had lost 
their charm for her ; as if the spreading foliage of Annesley 
had become dark for her. What caused this change ? On 
seeing again the companion of her childhood, did she con- 
trast her now solitary walks with those of earlier days in his 
beautiful j^ark, where beside her was the youth who would 
fain have kissed the ground on which she trod ? The sound 
of that hunting horn, which anon made her thrill with joy, 
when it announced the approach of her handsome betrothed, 
and awakened all the illusions of love, — had it now become 
to her more discordant and i^ainful by its contrast with the 
harmonious voice and sweet smile of him whom she had just 
seen again so changed to his advantage '? 

It was during his travels in the East that Lord Byron 
heard of this mysterious melancholy. Given the circum- 
stances, such a report would not have displeased, even if it 
had not pleased, vulgar, rancorous souls. But it produced 
quite a contrary effect on him. The feeling of his own worth, 
doubtless, must and ought to have brought certain ideas to 
his mind ; but they saddened his generous nature, and he ex- 
perienced a desire to drive them away by saying, " Has she 
not the husband of her choice, and lovely children to caress 
her ?"' 

" What could her grief be ? — she liatl all she loved. 

* * :ic :)! * ^ 

What could her grief be ? — she had loved him not, 

* ***** 

Nor could he be a part of that which prey'd 
Upon her mind — a spectre of .the past." 

Lord Byron returned from his travels, and by degrees, as 
he rose in the admiration of England, the melancholy observ- 
able in Mrs. Musters deepened. 

One day she felt such a longing to see again the compan- 



4:04: Generosity a Heroism. 

ion of her childhood, that she asked for an interview. Conld 
he not desire the meeting ? But ought he to grant it ? He 
had liad the courage to meet her again when he thought her 
haj^py, when soitow for the past belonged to him alone, 
when she appeared neither to understand nor to share it. 
But would his heart be equally strong — would it not yield 
on seeing her nnhapj^y ?* And yet, what could he then do 
for her happiness ? With the same generosity that induced 
him always to sacrifice his jDleasure to the happiness of oth- 
ers, he listened to his reason, his heart, and the prudent coun- 
sels of his sister ; he refrained from an interview which could 
only augment the troubles of that devastated soul, soon to 
become the " queen of a fantastic kingdom "in reason's night. 
But he ever preserved a tender remembrance of Miss Cha- 
worth, only forgetting the wrong she had done him.f 

Lord Byron's conduct had been no less generous toward 
Mr. Mustex's, his triumphant rival in the afl:ections of Miss 
Chaworth. Mr. Musters, though several years older than 
Lord Byron, was, nevertheless, among his early companions. 
The parents of this young man resided at their country-seat, 
called Colwich, a few miles distant from Newstead, and Lord 
Byron often, accepted their hospitality. One day the two 
youths were bathing in the Trent (a river which runs through 
the grounds of Colwich), when Mr. Musters perceived a ring 
among Lord Byron's clothes, left on the bank. To see and 
take possession of it was the affair of a moment. He had 
recognized it as having belonged to Miss Chaworth. Lord 
Byron claimed it, but Musters would not restore the ring. 
High AVOi"ds Avere exchanged. On returning to the house, 
Musters jumped on a horse and galloped off to ask an expla- 

* She had been obliged to separate from her husband, who returned her sac- 
rifices by bad and even brutal treatment. 

t "Oh! she was changed 

As by the sickness of the soul; her mind 
Had wandered from its dwelling, and her eyes 
Tliey had not their own lustre, but the look 
Which is not of the earth ; she was become 
The queen of a fantastic realm ; her thoughts 
Were combinations of disjointed things ; 
And forms impalpable and unperceivcd 
Of others' sight familiar were to hers. 
And this the world calls frenzv." 



Generosity a Heroism. 405 

nation from Miss Chaworth, who, being forced to confess 
that Lord Byron wore the ring with her consent, felt obliged 
to make amends to Musters by promising to declare immedi- 
ately her engagement with him. Proud of his success, he 
returned home and acquainted Lord Byron with Miss Cha- 
worth's determination. Dinner was announced. The family 
sat down, and soon perceived there was something amiss be- 
tween the two friends, whose gloomy silence spoke more elo- 
quently than words. Before the end of dinner Lord Byron 
left the table, unable to endure the provocations of his rival. 

The parents of Musters, though completely ignorant of 
Avhat had caused the quarrel, were uneasy for the conse- 
quences. After dinner bitter w^ords were again exchanged 
between the two young men, and Musters used such coarse, 
insolent language that Lord Byron could ill restrain his in- 
dignation. Anger flashing from his eyes expressed itself as 
warmly in words. Li this frame of mind he retired to his 
room, and remained long shut up there, while Musters be- 
lieved he was preparing to leave Cohvich that very night. 
But the magnanimous youth, on reflection, understood that 
at fifteen he ought not to pretend to carry off" the fair prize 
of seventeen from a man nine years his senior; and that it 
was not generous to grieve his hosts and hurt the reputation 
of the lady he loved. Accordingly, he suppressed his sor- 
row, his pride, his anger. Instead of returning to Newstead, 
he made his appearance as usual in the drawing-room, and to 
the astonishment of his rival, excused himself for having 
shown anger, and thus failed in politeness to his hosts. 
Candidly, and with regret, he acknowledged that the excess 
of his feelings had caused the outburst. From that day 
forth he gave up all pretensions to Miss Chaworth's love, and, 
forgiving them both with equal magnanimity, he even con- 
tinued inviting his rival to Newstead. " But," said he, " noAV 
my heart would hate him if he loved her not." 

On declaring to Moore, in a letter Avritten from Pisa, that 
he would still forgive fresh wrongs. Lord Byron made this 
avowal : — " The truth is, I can not keep up resentment, how- 
ever violent may be its explosion." 

At all periods of his life, he remained the young man of 
1814, saying that he could not go to rest with anger at his 



406 Generosity a Heroism. 

heart. In Greece, a few weeks before his glorious death, he 
gave another proof of it by his conduct toward Colonel Stan- 
hope (afterward Lord Harrington). They had persuaded 
Lord Byron that the colonel was very jealous of his influence, 
and of the enthusiasm manifested for him. True or not, Lord" 
Byron could not but believe it. The colonel arrived in 
Greece (sent by the London committee), for the purpose, it 
was said, of uniting with Lord Byron, and acting jointly in 
favor of Greek independence ; but in reality, it would have 
seemed as if he came only to counteract what ByrQn wished. 
Their ideas on matters of administration and on political 
economy, their principles with regard to institutions and 
means of government, Avere totally opposed. Bentham was 
the colonel's idol and model, while Lord Byron particularly 
disliked the moral and social consequences flowing from Ben- 
tihim's doctrines. Ever straightforward and practical. Lord 
Byron thought the Greeks ought to begin by gaining their 
indejiendence, and that they had better he taught to read before 
they tcere made to buy books, and the liberty of the p^'ess were 
given them. Good and honorable, but fond of systems, the 
colonel always wished to begin by the end. Thence resulted 
long discussions between them, which produced hours of en- 
nui for Lord Byron, and many annoyances, most prejudicial 
to his health, which was then very delicate. One evening, 
among others, the colonel grew so excited, that he told him 
he believed him to be a friend of the Turks. Lord Byron 
only answered : " Judge me by my actions." Both appeared 
angry ; the colonel got up to leave. Lord Byron, who was 
the oflended party, instead of bearing rancor, rose also, and, 
going straight to the colonel, said : " Give me your honest 
hand, and good-night." The night would not have passed 
tranquilly for Lord Byron without this reconciliation. 

Among numerous proofs of this generous spirit of forgive- 
ness, — so numerous that choice is diflicult — we shall select 
his behavior toward a certain Mr. Scott, who, at the time of 
his separation, had attacked him in a savage, cruel manner, — 
not only unjustly, but even without any provocation. 

" I beg to call particular attention," says Moore, " to the 
extract about to follow. 

" Those who at all remember the peculiar bitterness and 



Generosity a Heroism. 407 

violence, with wliich Mr. Scott had assailed Lord Byron, at a 
crisis when both his heart and fame were most vulnerable, 
will, if I am not mistaken, feel a thrill of pleasurable admira- 
tion, in reading these sentences, such as they were penned by 
Lord Byron, for his own expressions can alone convey any 
adequate notion of the proud, generous pleasure that must 
have been felt in Avriting them : — 

" 'Poor Scott is no more ! In the exercise of his vocation, 
he contrived, at last, to make himself the subject of a cor- 
oner's inquest. But he died like a brave man, and he lived an 
able one. I knew him personally, thoi;gh slightly ; although 
several years my senior, we had been school-fellows together, 
at the grammar-school of Aberdeen. He did not behave to 
me quite handsomely, in his capacity of editor, a few years 
ago, but he was under no obligation to behave otherwise. 
The 'moment teas too tempting for many friends, and for all 
enemies. At a time when all my relations (save one) fell 
from me, like leaves from the tree in autumn winds, and my 
few friends became still fewer, — when the whole periodical 
press (I mean the daily and weekly, not the literary, press) 
Avas let loose against me, in every shape of reproach, with 
the two strange exceptions (from their usual opposition) of, 
"The Courier" and "The Examiner," — the paper of which 
Scott had the direction was neither the last nor the least vi- 
tuperative. Two years ago, I met him at Venice, when he 
was bowed in grief, by the loss of his son, and had known, 
by experience, the bitterness of domestic pi'ivation. He was 
then earnest Avith me to return to England, and on my tell- 
ing him, Avith a smile, that he was once of a different opinion, 
he replied to me, " thai he, and others, had been greatly misled; 
and that some j^cdns, and rather extraordinary means, had 
been taken to excite them.'''' Scott is no more, but there are 
more than one living Avho were present at this dialogue. He 
was a man of very considerable talents and of great acquire- 
ments. He had made his Avay, as a literary character, Avith 
high success, and in a few years. Poor felloAv! I recollect 
his joy, at some appointment, Avhich he had obtained, or was 
to obtain, through Sir James Mackintosh, and which prevent- 
ed the further extension (unless by a rapid run to Rome) of 
his travels in Italy. I little thought to Avhat it Avould con- 



408 Generosity a Heroism. 

duct him. Peace he with him! and may all such other faults 
as are inevitable to humanity be as readily forgiven him as the 
little injury ichich he had done to o?ie icho respected his talents 
and regrets his loss. Byron. ' " 

Nor did his magnanimity stop here. After Scott's death, 
a subscription for his widow was got up, and Lord Byron 
was requested to contribute ten pounds. 

"You may make my subscription for Mr. Scott's widow 
thirty pounds, instead of the proposed ten," answered he ; 
" but' do not put down my name. As I mentioned him in 
the j^amphlet, it would look indelicate." 

But this refined generosity was only one of the forms 
which Lord Byron's kindliness took. To act thus, was a ne- 
cessity for this privileged nature, that could not endure to 
hate, and loved to pardon. Still, his generosity had not yet 
entered on the road of great sacrifices. It had not yet reach- 
ed the highest degree of power over self It did attain to 
that, when it led him to comprise in one general pardon the 
so-called friends who had abandoned him in his hour of sac- 
rifice, and those bitter enemies Avho knew no reconciliation, 
when he forgave Lady Byron. Then his generosity merited 
the name of virtue. 

Pusillanimity, which binds Avith an invisible chain the 
hearts and tongues of vulgar souls, in unreal exacting society, 
had carried away some; jealousy of his superiority had ren- 
dered others ferocious ; and an absolute moral monstrosity — 
an anomaly in the history of types of female hideousness — 
had succeeded in showing itself in the light of magnanimity. 
But false as w^as this high quality in Lady Byron, so did it 
shine out in him true and admirable. The position in which 
Lady Byron had placed him, and where she continued to 
keep him by her harshness, silence, and strange refusals, was 
one of those which cause such sufiering, that the highest de- 
gree of self-control seldom sufiices to quiet the promptings of 
human weakness, and to cause persons of even slight sensi- 
bility to preserve moderation. Yet, wdth his sensibility and 
the knowledge of his w' orth, how did he act ? — what did he 
say ? I will not speak of his " Farewell," of the care he took 
to shield her from blame by throwing it on others, by taking 



Generosity a Heroism. 409 

much too large a slmve to himself, when in reality his sole fault 
kxy in havmg married her ; because it might be objected that, 
when he acted thus, he had not given xip tlievnsh of reunion. 

But at Venice, and more especially at Ravenna and Pisa, 
this project certainly had ceased to exist ; the measure of 
insult was filled up to overflowing. And yet, in one of 
those days of exasperation which letters from London never 
failed to produce, and precisely when he was writing pages 
on Lady Byron that could scarcely be complimentary, he 
learned that she had been taken ill. His augev and his pen 
both fell simultaneously, and he hastened to throw into the 
fire what he had written. Another time he was told that 
Lady Byron lived in constant dread of having Ada forcibly 
taken from her. 

" Yes," he re]>lied, " I might claim her in Chancery, with- 
out having recourse to any other means ; but I would rather 
be unhappy myself than make Lady Byron so." 

And he said this, well knowing how his name was kept 
from his daughter, like a forbidden thing ; and that his pict- 
ure was hidden from her sight by a curtain. 

One day at Rome, while he was walking amid the ruins 
of the Forum, treading w^ow those mighty relics that, to 
him, breathed language and Avell-nigh sentiments, that seem- 
ed like some magic temiDle of the past, Lord Byron traced 
l)ack, in thought, his own career. The meamiesses of which 
he had been, and still was, the victim rose up to view. He 
allowed his thoughts to. wander amid the saddest memories. 
All the wounds of his still bleeding heart opened afresh. 
The serenity of the starry sky, the silence of that solemn 
hour, the ideas of order, peace, and justice, which such a 
scene ever awakens, contrasted strangely with the material 
devastation around worked by time. The natural eifect of 
a grand spectacle like this, is to render sadder still those 
moral ruins accumulated within by the wickedness of man. 

Then did his past, so recent still, rise up before him in all 
its bitterness. And, taking earth and heaven to witness, he 
exclaimed : — . 

"Have I not had to wrestle with my lot? 
Have I not suffered things to be forgiven ? 
Have I not had my brain sear'd, my heart riven, 
Hopes sapp'd, name blighted, Life's life lied awav? 

s 



410 GenerO'Sity a Heroism. 

And only not to desperation driven, 
Because not altogether of such clay 
As rots into the souls of those whom I survey. 

" From mighty wrongs to petty perfidx-, 
Have I not seen what human things could do? 
From the loud roar of foaming calumny 
To the small whisper of the as paltry lew, 
And subtler venom of the reptile crew. 
The Janus glance of whose signKicant eye, 
Learning to lie with silence., icould seem true. 
And without utterance, save the shrug or sigh, 
Deal round to haiipy fools its speechless obloquy." 

His spirit stirred with excitement, he invoked tlie aid of 
the divinity whose shrine these Roman remains appeared to 
be — 

' ' O Time ! the beautifier of the dead, 
Adorner of the ruin, comforter 
And only healer when the heart hath bled; 
Time ! the corrector where our judgments err, 
The test of truth, love — sole philosopher. 
For all beside are sophists — from thy thrift, 
Which never loses though it doth defer — 
Time, the avenger ! unto thee I lift 
M}' hands, and eyes, and heart, and crave of thee a gift." 

And what was this gift ? Was it vengeance ? No ! It 
was the repentance of those who had done and were still do- 
ing liim Avrong ; that was the prayer lie sent np to heaven, 
so as not to have worn in vain this iron in his soul, and so 
that, when his earthly life should cease, his spirit, — 

" Z/ii'c the rememher'd tone of a mute Igre, 
Shall on their softened spirits sink, arid move. 
In hearts all rocky now, the late remorse of love."* 

Arrived before the temple of Nemesis, — that dread divin- 
ity who has never left unpunished human injustice, — Lord 
Byron evokes her thus :- — 

" Dost thou not hear my heart.' — Awake! thou shalt, and must." 

He feels that the guilty will not escape the vengeance of 
the goddess, since it is inevitable ; but, as to him, he Avill not 
wreak it. Nemesis shall Avatch ; he will sleep. lie reserves 
to himself.) Jwioever., one revenge. Which? Ever the same: — 
Forgiveness ! 

" That curse shall be forgiveness. '"f 
* " Childe Harold," canto iv. f Ibid. 



Genekosity a Heroism. -±11 

Now, we have seen that his generosity did not recoil from 
any sacrifice of fortune, repose, aftection ; we have seen it 
strong against all privations, all instincts, all interests ; in 
short, we have looked at it under all the asjDccts that con- 
stitute great beauty of soul. There remains only one degree 
more for him to attain — heroism. But the constant exercise 
of generosity of soul, in inferior degrees, will give him pow- 
er to reach that sublime height, and, summing up all in one, 
arrive at the crowning sacrifice of his life. 

Already more than once, in Italy, and especially in Eo- 
magna, Avhen that peninsula was preparing a grand struggle 
for independence, Lord Byron had shown himself ready to 
make any sacrifice, to aid in throwing off" Austrian chains. 
But, owing to subsequent events, his extreme devotedness 
could not then go beyond the offer made. Two years later 
it was accepted ; an enslaved nation, eager for redemption, 
asked Lord Byron's assistance toward regaining its liberty. 
In this sacrifice on his part, no single feature of greatness is 
wanting. Lord Byron would have been great, had he sacri- 
ficed himself for his country; but how much greater was he 
in sacrificing himself for a foreign nation, for the general 
cause of humanity ? He would still have remained great, had 
he been led into this noble sacrifice by his own enthusiasm, by 
his illusions, by personal hopes. But no illusion, no enthu- 
siasm, impelled him toward Greece ; naught save the satisfac- 
tion caused in a noble mind by the performance of a great 
action. He did not even hope to escape ingratitude or to si- 
lence calumny ; for, although so young, he had already ac- 
quired the experience of mature years. He knew Greece, 
and was Avell aware what he should find there, in exchange 
for his rei:)0se and for all dear to him in this world. We 
know what sadness overwhelmed his soul dui'ing the last pe- 
riod of his sojourn at Genoa, Tlie struggles he had with his 
own heart may be imagined, when Ave reflect, that despite his 
self-control, he was more than once surprised with tears in 
his eyes. 

When hardly out of port from Genoa, a tempest cast him 
back. He landed, and resolved on visiting the abode he had 
left with such anguish the day before. While climbing the 
hill of Albano, the darkest presentiments took possession of 



412 Generosity a Heroism. 

his soul. " Wliere shall we be this day next year ?" said he 
to Count Gamba, Avho was Avalking by his side. Alas ! we 
know that precisely that day next year, his mortal remains 
were carried through the streets of London, on their way to 
repose with his ancestors, near Newstead. His sorrow only 
increased on arriving at the palace. His friends were gone ; 
all within that dwelling was silent, deserted, solitary. He 
asked to be left alone ; and then shut himself up in his aj^art- 
ments, remaining there for several hours. What was his oc- 
cupation ? What were his thoughts ? Through what strange 
agony did he pass? Who shall tell us (since he concealed 
it), of that last struggle between the Man and the Hero ? 

The sadnesses of great souls are ^msjyeakable, almost super- 
human. They are beyond the scales where we would weigh 
them. But we know that he understood and tasted the bit- 
terness of this chalice,* Avithout drawing back, without failing 
to drain it to the last. 

Night came, and behold him once more on board the ves- 
sel. The tempest roared again, then ceased ; but the storm 
within his soul did not cease. Only when a tear sometimes 
threatened betrayal, did he hasten to the privacy of his cabin. 

We Avill not give here the narrative of this voyage. 
These pages, avc again repeat, are not a biography, but the 
picture of a soul. 

On arriving at the Ionian Islands, he soon understood that 
his sacrifice, though not beyond Avhat circumstances demand- 
ed, certainly far transcended any hope that could exist of re- 
generating this fallen race, and constituting a nation worthy 
to bear the glorious name of Greece. But it mattered not .: 
he had given his word, and he was resolved to remain in the 
country. He even quitted the asylum afforded by the Ionian 
Islands, and determined to encounter all dangers, the better 
to accomplish his mission. 

Then he went to Missolonghi. The privations he under- 
went there, the moral and physical fatigue, the effluvia from 
the adjoining marshes, and the mode of life he was forced 
to lead, all combined to affect his naturally good health. He 
Avas eiitreated to leave this unhealthy place, and told that 
his life depended on it. He felt it and knew it. Already 

* See his " Life in Italv." 



Geneeosity a Heroism. 413 

he perceived the spectre of the future, and, at the same time, 
the image of his beloved Italy floated before his eyes, — all 
that he had left, and would still find there ; he represent- 
ed to himself the existence he might lead there, quiet and 
hajjpy, surrounded with love and respect. Still so young, 
handsome, rich, and almost adored, for whom could life have 
more value ? But, if he left, what would become of Greece ? 
His presence was worth an army to that unhappy country. 
So, then, he would not desert his post ; he resolved to remain^ 
cotne what might. ^^JVo, T'lta ; no^ toe will not return to Italy ^"^ 
said he sadly to his faithful Venetian follower a few days be- 
fore he fell ill. He did remain^ and he died. . 

By this action, in which he overcame himself. Lord Byron 
gave one of those rare examples of self-immolation, of virtue, 
and heroism, which, says a noble mind of our day,* " aftbrd 
real consolation to the soul, and reflect the greatest honor on 
the human race." 

* ]M. Janet. 



414 Faults of Lord Byron. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

FAULTS OF LORD BYRON. 

After having shown the virtues Lord Byron possessed, it 
might seem useless to inquire whether he had no* the faults 
whose absence they prove. Still, however, it is well to look 
at the subject from anothei point of view, and to offer, so to 
say, counter-proof. Foi-, in judging him, all rules have been 
disregarded, not only those of justice and equity, but likewise 
those of logic. And, as it has been variously asserted of him, 
that he was constant and inconstant, firm and fickle, guided 
by principle, yet giving way to every impulse ; that he was 
both chaste and profligate, a sensual man and an anchorite ; 
calumny alone can not be accused of all these contradictions. 
We must then seek out conscientiously whether there were 
not other causes for this hiconsistenci/, so as to return back 
within due bounds, and bring contradiction in accord Avith 
truth. It is, of course, beyond dispute that the first cause of 
the unjust verdicts passed upon him lay in the bad passions 
stirred up by liis success, by the independent language he 
used, and his contempt for a thousand national prejudices. 
Nevertheless, as the degree of injustice dealt out toward him 
was quite extraordinary, it may be asked whether some real 
defects did not lend specious reason to his enemies, and thus 
we are forced to confess that he had one great fault, which 
did poAverf ully aid their wickedness ; it consisted in a species 
of cruelty toward himself, a ^^ositive necessity of calumnia- 
ting himself. 

Although the origin of this fault or defect must have been 
principally in the greatness of his soul, it certainly had other 
secondary and lesser causes, and, in common with many other 
qualities, it was fatal to his happiness ; for men accustomed 
to exaggerate their OAvn virtues only too readily believed him. 
Tliis mode of doing harm to and persecuting liimself, of cast- 



Faults of Lord Byron. 415 

ing shadows over his brilliant destiny, was so strange and so 
real, that it is necessary to show to what extent he did it, by 
collecting some of the numerous testimonies given among 
those who knew him, before Ave bring out the real cause of 
his fault, as well as the effect it had on his happiness and his 
reputation. 

In no hands could his character have been less safe than 
his own, nor any greater wrong offered to his memory than 
the substitution of what he affected to be, for what he was. 

While yet a student at Cambridge, he wrote a letter to 
Miss Pigott, full of gayety and fun, giving as an excuse for 
his silence the dissipated life he was leading, and Avhich he 
calls a wretched chaos of noise and drimke7iness, doing noth- 
ing hut hunt, drink Burgundy, play, intrigue, libertinize. 
Then he exclaims : — 

" What misery to have nothing else to do but make love 
and verses, and create enemies for one's self." 

But while avowing this misery, he adds that he has just 
toritten 214: pages ofj^rose aiid 1200 verses. 

And Moore remarks, in a note annexed to this curious let- 
ter : — 

" W^e observe here, as in other parts of his early letters, 
that sort of display and boast of rakishness which is but too 
common a folly at this period of life, when the young aspi- 
rant to manhood persuades himself that to be profligate is to 
be manly. Unluckily, this boyish desire to be thought worse 
than he really was remained with Lord Byron, as did some 
other failings and foibles, long after the period when, with 
others, they are past and forgotten ; and his mind, indeed, was 
but beginning to outgrow them when he was snatched away." 

When Moore speaks of the letter in which Lord Byron, 
. replying to the praise given by Mr. Dallas, says he did not 
merit it, and depreciates himself morally in every possible 
way, Moore adds : — 

"Here again, however, we should recollect there must be 
a considerable share of allowance for the usual tendency to 
make the most and the v;orst of his oicn obliquities. There 
occurs, indeed, in his first letter to Mr. Dallas, an account of 
this strange ambition, the very reverse, it must be alloAved, of 
hypocrisy — which led him to court rather than avoid the rep- 



416 Faults of Loed Byron. 

iitation of profligacy, and to put, at all times, the worst face 
on his own character and conduct." 

Mr. Dallas, writing for the first time to Lord Byron after 
having read his early poems, j^aid him some compliments on 
the moral beauties and charitable sentiments contained in his 
verses, remarking that they recalled another noble aiithor, who 
was not only a poet, an orator, and a distinguished historian, 
but one of the most vigorous reasoners in England on the 
truths of that religion of which forgiveness forms the ruling 
principle, viz., the good and great Lord Lyttelton. Lord By- 
ron answered, depreciating himself in a literary sense, and 
calumniating himself morally, by the assertion that he resem- 
bled Lord Lyttelton's son — ^a bad, though talented man- — 
rather than the great author. 

Dallas had the good sense to take this appreciation for what 
it was worth, and asked permission to pay the young noble- 
man a visit. Lord Byron answered politely that he should 
be happy«to make his acquaintance, but continued to paint 
himself, especially as regarded his opinions, in the most un- 
favorable colors. Moore gives the Avhole of this letter, and 
then adds : — 

"It must be recollected, before we attach any particular 
imiDortance to the details of his creed, that in addition to the 
temjitation — never easily resisted b}' him — of disj^laying his 
wit, at the expense of his character, he was here addressing a 
person who, though, no doubt, well meaning, was evidently 
one of those officious self-satisfied advisers Avhom it was the 
delight of Lord Byron, at all times, to astonish and mystify. 

" The tricks which, when a boy, he j^layed upon the Not- 
tingham quack, Lavander, wex'e but the first of a long series, 
with which, through life, he amused himself, at the expense 
of all the numerous quacks whom his celebrity and sociability, 
drew around him." 

In the first satire he gave to the world, and which attracted 
sympathy for his talent as well as for the justice of his cause, 
the horror he entertained of hypocrisy already made him speal: 
against himself: — 

"E'en I — least thinking of a thoughtless throng, 
Just skill'd to know the right and choose the wrong." 

After having quoted an early poem of Lord Byron, written 



Faults of Lord Byron. 417 

in an hour of great depression, and which would seem inspired 
by momentary madness, Moore makes the following declara- 
tion : — 

" These concluding lines are of a nature, it must be owned, 
to awaken more of horror than of interest, were we not pre- 
pared, by so many instances of his exaggeration in this re- 
spect, not to be startled at any lengths to which the spirit of 
self-libelling would carry him. It seemed as if, with the pow- 
er of painting fierce and gloomy personages, he had also the 
ambition to be himself the dark ' sublime he drew,' and that, 
in his fondness for the delineation of heroic crime, he endeav- 
ored to fancy, where he could not find in his own character, 
fit subjects for his pencil." 

Moore, mentioning another article in his memoranda, where 
Lord Byron accuses himself of irritability of temperament in 
his early youth, follows up with this reflection : — 

" In all his portraits of himself, the pencil he uses is so dark 
that the picture of his temperament and his self-attempts, 
covering as they do with a dark shadoio the shade itself, must 
be taken with large allowance for exaggeration." 

In another passage of his work, Moore further says : — 

" To the perverse fancy he had for falsifying his own char- 
acter, and even imputing to himself faults the most alien to 
his nature, I have already frequently adverted. I had another 
striking instance of it one day at La Mira." 

Moore then relates that, on leaving Venice, he went to La 
Mira to bid Lord Byron farewell. Passing through the hall, 
he saw the little Allegra, who had just returned from a walk. 
Moore made some remark on the beauty of the child, and By- 
ron answered, " Have you any notion — but I suppose you 
have — of what they call the parental feeling ? For myself, I 
have not the least." And yet, when that child died, in a year 
or two afterward, he who had uttered this artificial speech was 
so overwhelmed by the event, that those who were about him 
at the time actually trembled for his reason.* 

Colonel Stanhoj)e, afterward Lord Harrington, who knew 
Lord Byron in Greece, shortly before his death, says : — 

" Most men affect a virtuous character ; Lord Byron's am- 
bition, on the contrary, seemed to be to make the world be- 

* Moore's " Life," vol. iv. p. 241. 

S 2 



418 Faults of Lord Byron. 

lieve that he was a sort of Satan, though impelled by high 
sentiments to accomplish great actions. Happily for his rep- 
utation, he p>ossessed another quality that unmasked him coni- 
2)letely : he loas the most open and most sincere of men, and 
his nature, inclined to good, ever sxoayed all his actions.''''* 

Mr. Finlay, who knew Lord Byron about the same time, 
says that not only he calumniated himself hut that he hid his 
best sentiments. 

Speaking of the simplicity of his manners, and his repug- 
nance for all emphasis : — 

" I have always observed," continues Mr. Finlay, " that he 
adopted a very simple and even monotonous tone, when he 
had to say any thing not quite in the ordinary style of con- 
versation. AYhenever he had begun a sentence Avhich show- 
ed that the subject interested him, and which contained sub- 
lime thought, he would check himself suddenly, and come to 
an end without concluding, either with a smile of indifference 
or in a careless tone. I thought he had adopted this mode 
to hide his real sentiments when lie feared lest his tongue 
should be carried away by his heart; and often he did so ev- 
idently to hide the author or rather the poet. But in satire 
or clever conversation his genius took full flight."f 

And Stanhope further adds : — 

" I also have observed that Lord Byron acted in this way. 
He often liked to hide the noble sentiments that filled his 
soul, and even tried to turn them into ridicule."J 

This was only too true. The spirit of repartee and fun 
often made him display his intellectual faculties at the ex- 
pense of his moral nature and his truest sentiments. 

Moore says that when Lord Byron went to Ravenna to see 

Countess G ^gain, he wrote to Hoppner, who looked after 

his affairs, in such a light vein of pleasantry, that it would 
have been difficult for any one not knowing him thoroughly 
to conceive- the possibility of his expressing himself thus, 
while under the influence of a passion so sincere :— 

" But such is ever the wantonness of the mocking spirit, 
from which nothing — not even love — remains sacred; and 
which at last, for want of other food, turns upon self. The 
same horror, too, of hypocrisy that led Lord Byron to exag- 

* Parry, 273.' f Letter from Finlay to Stanhopp, Parry, 210. 1 PatTv, 210. 



Faults of Lord Byron. 419 

gerate his own errors led him also to disguise, under a seem- 
ingly heartless ridicule, all those natural and kindly qualities 
by which they were redeemed." 

And by way of contrast with the strange lightness of his 
letter to Hoppner, as Avell as to do justice to the reality of his 
passion, Moore then quotes the whole of those beautiful stan- 
zas, called " The Po," which Lord Byron wrote while crossing 
that river on his way from Venice to Ravenna.* 

We might multiply quotations, in order to prove that all 
those who kuew him have more or less remarked this phe- 
nomenon. But no one has well determined its jn-incipal 
cause; or else it has been too much confounded with the 
strange caprices he showed, especially in early youth; for 
subsequently, says Moore, " when he saio that the icorld grave- 
ly believed the opinion he had given of himself, he refused 
any longer to echo it.'''' 

There is certainly truth in the judgment passed by Moore 
and others. It can not be denied that, when as a boy, he 
boasted of his dissipated life at the University, the chief rea- 
son of it lay in the folly common to that period of life, which 
impels human beings while yet children to seek to appear like 
men by aping the vices of riper years. It can not be denied, 
either, that the pleasure of mystifying suggested his answer 
to Dallas ; that an exaggerated horror of hypocrisy taught his 
pen a thousand censures of himself beginning with his first 
satire ; that a sort of over-excitement and reaction of imagi- 
nation gave him, at times, the strange ambition of appearing 
to be one of those dark, proud heroes he loved to paint for 
the sake of effect. Moreover, we must not forget that witty 
turn of mind which his extraordinary perception of the I'idic- 
ulous, and his facility for seeing the two sides of things, often 
made him to display at the expense of his better nature, by 
seeming to mock his truest sentiments, as Avhen he wrote to 
Hoppner : a psychological phenomenon, of which the cause 
has been more particularly sought elsewhere. Finally, we may ' 
also add that he might have believed he was disarming envy 
and malice by speaking against himself; and that he was to 
a certain extent escaping from the effects of those evil passions 
by throwing them something whereon to feed. Who knows 

* Moore, 214, vol. ii. in 4to. 



420 Faults of Lord Byiion. 

whether he also did not^a little through goodness of heart 
and greatly through the tactics that make good politicians 
complain of the unpleasantnesses attached to their greatness 
— ascribe to himself imaginary defects, so as to let some com- 
passion, under the form of blame, mix with the malice that 
hemmed him in on all sides ; and whether he did not think it 
well to make use of this means, as of a shield to ward off 
their blows ? This sort of generous artifice, Avhich I more 
than once suspected in him, may serve as long as public favor 
lasts ; but when persecution gets the upper hand, — Avhich is 
the case sooner or later with all greatness and all virtues — 
when Envy triumphs by means of calumny, she converts into 
poison, benefits, virtues, gratitude. Thus, if our hypothesis 
be correct. Lord Byron would have been cruelly punished for 
his weakness in allowing that to be believed of him which Avas 
not true. Still, all we have observed can only furnish, at best, 
the secondary and evanescent causes of the moral phenome- 
non described, and those who woidd fain penetrate the recess- 
es of Lord Byron's soul must search deeper for explanation. 
Our idea is, the first cause will be found to lie in some senti- 
ment that reigned all powerful in his breast. I mean that he 
placed his ideal standard too high, and the influence it exer- 
cised over him was manifest even to his last moments. 

In the severe judgments which he has pronounced upon 
himself in the first place, on mankind in general, and on some 
particular individuals, the ideal model of all the intellectual, 
moral, and physical beauty which he found in the depth of' 
his own mind, shone with divine lustre before his imagina- 
tion, by the union of faculties imbued with extraordinary en- 
ergy. 

"VYe see, by a thousand traits, that his ideal was formed 
much earlier than is common with ordinary children. In his 
first youthful poems it already displayed itself much devel- 
oped. Ever attracted toward truth, his first desire was to 
seek after that ; and the better to do so, he searched into him- 
self, analyzed what was passing Avithin and without, and final- 
ly proclaimed it without any consideration for himself or 
others. 

At Harrow we see him leaving off play to go and sit down 
alone and meditate on the stone now called JByroyi's tomh. 



Faults of Lord Byron. 421 

At Cambridge afterward, despite the dissipation he shared 
equally with his comrades, amid games and exercises in which 
he greatly excelled, we still find him courting meditation un- 
der shady trees. On returning to his home, the Abbey, when 
surrounded with the noise and frolic of boisterous compan- 
ions, we see hini devote himself to study and solitary reflec- 
tion ; finally, during his travels, and after his return, when all 
England was at his feet, we behold him still and ever expe- 
riencing that imperious toant of scanning himself, of descend- 
ing into the depths of his own heart, interrogating his con- 
science, and very often of writing down in his memorandum- 
books the severe sentences pronounced by that inflexible 
judge. And, as he could not put away from sight his di- 
vine model, he came out from these examinations hicmhled, 
dissatisfied^ reproaching and punishing himself for having 
strayed from it. For he discovered too many terrestrial ele- 
ments in all human virtues. For instance, in friendships, 
though so generous on his side, he found the satisfaction 
of a personal want, consequently, an egotistical element ; the 
same, and much more strongly, with regard to love. He 
found something personal in the best instincts, in the pas- 
sion for glory, in patriotism, even in the sentiment of vener- 
ation, since that is an echo of our tastes and personal sym- 
pathies. That the high standard of his ideal wds the first 
cause of injustice toward himself, a thousand proofs might 
be offered. I will choose some only. We read in his mem- 
oranda : — 

" It has lately been in my power to make tAvo men happy. 
I am delighted at it, especially as regards the last, for he is 
excellent. Jiut I ivish there had been a little •more sacrifice 
on my part, and less satisfaction for my self-love in doing 
that, because then there would have been more merits 

Such was this great culprit. He actually felt pleasure in 
doing good ! Another time he was asked to present a peti- 
tion to Parliament. " I am not in a humor for this business," 
writes he in the evening journal, where he examined his con- 
science. He was suffering then from grief, caused by the ab- 
sence of a person he loved, and he apostrophizes himself in 

these terras : — " Had been here she would have made me 

do it. There is a woman who, amid all her fascination, al- 



422 Faults of Lokd Byron. 

ways urged a man to usefulness or glory. Had she remained, 
she had been my tutelar genius. 

" Baldwin is very unfortunate ; but, poor fellow, ' I can't 
get out; I can't get out,' said the starling. Ah! I am as 
bad as that dog Sterne, 'who preferred ichining over a dead 
ass to relieving a living mother. Villain ! hypocrite ! slave ! 
sycophant ! But I am no better. Here I can not stimulate 
myself to a speech for the sake of these tinfortunates, and 

three loords and half a smile of , had she been here to 

urge it {and urge it she infcdlibly would; at least, she ahcays 
pressed me on in senatorial duties, and particularly in the 
cause of weakness), woidd have made me an advocate, if not 
an orator. Curse on liochefoucault for being always right!'''' 

Another time Jie also accused himself of selfishness, be- 
cause -he icrote only for amusement ! He was then but twen- 
ty-three years of age : — 

" To withdraw myself from myself {oh, that cursed selfish- 
ness!) has ever been my sole, my entire, my sincere motive 
in scribbling at all ; and publishing is also the continuance of 
the same object, by the action it affords to the mind, which 
else recoils upon itself." 

This hard opinion of man's virtue, formed by many moral- 
ists, and especially by those who see virtue only in pure disin- 
terested benevolence, Avas an impulse with Lord Byron rather 
than the result of reason ; and I much doubt whether this 
craving for equity and truth were ever practically combined 
and harmonized with the faculty of benevolence in any one 
else as it was with Lord Byron, for this combination evident- 
ly formed the most striking part of his character. Montaigne 
himself, — who, if he did not possess as much innate benevo- 
lence, had nevertheless the faculty, and even felt the want of 
entering into his conscience, and examining it, so as to draw 
forth general notions, — says, " When I examine myself con- 
scientiously, I find that my best sort of goodness has a vicious 
tint.'' 

And he fears that even Plato, in his brightest virtue, had 
he analj'zed it well, would have found some human admixture. 
And then he sums up by saying, " Man is made up of bits and 
oddities."* 

* ^Montaigne, vol. iii. p. §7. 



Faults of Lord Byron. 423 

But these sincere philosophers are few in number, and 
their maxims can never be popular. For men in general ex- 
perience rather the Avant of magnifying than of depreciating 
themselves, and, instead of taking their best models from an 
ideal, they choose them from reality, judge characters, com- 
pare themselves to other men, and, living like other people, 
see no guilt in themselves ; while Lord Byron, living as they 
did, discovered in himself weaknesses, reasons for modest}', 
regret, repentance. If he could have done as they did, he 
would have been satisfied, and he would either have escaped 
or vanquished calumny. But he coitld not and would not, 
though conscious of the harm thence resulting to himself. 

" You censure my life, Harness. When I compare myself 
with these men, my elders and my betters, I really begin to 
conceive myself a monument of prudence, — a walking statue, 
without feeling or failing ; and yet the world in general has 
given me a proud pre-eminence over them in profligacy. 
Yet I like the men, and, God knows, ought not to condemn 
their aberrations ; but I own I feel provoked when they dig- 
nify all this by the name of love. Romantic attachments for 
things marketable for a dollar !" 

One of his biographers pretends that he rendered himself 
justice another time, and represents him as saying, speaking 
of M : 

" See how well he has got on in the world ! He is just as 
little inclined to commit a bad action as incapable of doing a 
good one ; fear keeps him from the former, and wickedness 
from the latter. The difference between him and me is that 
I attack a great many people, and truly, with one or two ex- 
ceptions (and note that they are persons of my owm sex), I 
do not hate one ; while he says no harm of any one, but hates 
a great many, if not every body. Fancy, then, how amusing 
it would be to see him in the palace of Truth, when he would 
be thinking he was making the sweetest compliments, while 
all the time he would be giving vent to the accumulated spite 
and rancor of years, and then to see the person he had flat- 
tered so long listen to his real sentiments for the first time. 
Oh ! that would truly be a comic sight. As to me, ^ should 
appear to great advantage in the palace of Truth, for while I 
should bo tliinking to yex friends and enemies with harsh 



424 Faults of Lord Byron. 

speeches, I should be saying pretty things on the contrary ; 
for at bottom, I have no malice or ill-nature, — at least, not of 
that kind xohich lasts more than a m,oment.^^ 

" Never," adds the biographer, " was a truer observation 
made. Lord Byron's nature is ver^ fi^^€, despite all the bad 
weeds that might have attempted to spring up in it ; and I 
am convinced that it is the excellence of the poet, or rather 
the effect of such excellence, which has caused the faults of 
the man. 

" The severity of censure lavished on the man has increased 
in proportion to the admiration excited by the poet, and oft- 
en with the greatest injustice. The world offered up incense 
to the poet, while heaping ashes on the head of the man. He 
was indignant at such usage, and wounded pride avenged i^ 
self by painting himself in the darkest colors, as if to give a 
deeper hue than even his enemies had done; all the time forc- 
ing them to admiration for his genius, as boundless as was 
their disapprobation of his supposed character."* 

Is this conversation real or imaginary ? Doubt is allowar 
ble ; but, however it may be, the reflections of the biographer 
in this case are too sensible and too true for us not to quote 
them with pleasure. 

In concluding these remarks, which prove how high was 
the ideal type that impelled Lord Byron to be unjust to him- 
self, I will further observe, that it was the exaggeration of 
his great characteristic faculties which made him fail in some 
little virtue (such as prudence, when it has its source solely in 
our inrsonal interest). For it was only to this degree, and 
from this point of view, that Lord Byron lacked it. And it 
appears singular that his great mind should not have made 
him see, in this very craving after self-examination, caused by 
his inclination for truth, and in that extraordinary suscepti- 
bility of conscience Avhich lead to self-reproach for egotism, 
only because he felt ^^Icasitre in exercising heneficence and 
that it did not contain enough sacrifice; it is singular, I say, 
that this same spirit of equity did not make him see how he 
shone in the only two faculties that can have no alloy of ego- 
tism, ai^d which were very evidently the most striking quali- 
ties of his character. But he Avas, with regard to himself, 

* "Journal of Conversation," p. 195. 



Faults of Lord Byrox. 425 

like the torch which, lighting np distant objects, leaves those 
near it in obscurity. Lord Byron did not know himself ; he 
had by no means overcome that difficulty which the oracles 
of Greece pronounced the greatest. Only he was sometimes 
conscious of it. In his memoranda, written at Ravenna, in 
1821, after having said that he does not think the world judges 
him well, he adds : — 

'• I have seen myself compared, personally or poetically, in 
English, French, German as (interpreted to me), Italian and 
Portuguese, within these nine years, to Rousseau, Goethe, 
Young, Aretin, Timou of Athens, Dante, Petrarch, an Ala- 
baster Vase lighted up within, Satan, Shakspeare, Bonaparte, 
Tiberius, JEschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Harlequin the clown, 
Stemhold and Hopkins, to the Phantasmagoria, to Henry the 
Eighth, to Chenier, to Mirabeau, to Young, R. Dallas (the 
schoolboy), to Michael Angelo, to Raphael, to a petit maitre^ 
to Diogenes, to Childe Harold, to Lara, to the Count in ' Bep- 
po,' to Milton, to Pope, to Dryden, to Burns, to Savage, to 
Chatterton, to ' oft have I heard of thee, my Lord Byi'on,' in 
Shakspeare, to Churchill the poet, to Kean the actor, to Alfieri, 
etc., etc. The object of ^o many contradictory comparisons 
must probably be like something different fi'om them all ; but 
what that is is more than I know, or any body else." 

But had he known himself, he would have found that he 
realized one of the finest t}"])es of character that humanity can 
offer ; for his two characteristic faculties Avere, his attraction 
toward truth and benevolence. And in ceasing to calumniate 
himself, he would have snatched f i-om the hands of the envious 
and the enemies of truth, the principal weapon they made use 
of to defame him. 

"When one reflects on all this, one questions with astonish- 
ment how it is that all his biographers should have remained 
outside of truth. But it is useless insisting thereui^on, for we 
have given sufficient answer.* 

I will, then, confine myself to remarking here that one char- 
acteristic peculiar to the biographers of great men in general, 
is the extreme repugnance they feel toward praising their 
own subjects. What is the cause ? Do they fear being told 
they have made a panegyric, passing for flatterers, appearing 

* See chapter on Lord Byron's I'iographers. 



426 Faults of Lokd Bykon. 

to get through a task ? Do they believe that, iu order to show 
cleverness, perspicacity, and deep knowledge of the human 
heart, it is necessary to put in place of simple truth a sort of 
malice, not very intelligible, and often contradictory? All 
that may well be, but I believe that what they especially feel 
is, that if their books were only written for noble minds, pos- 
sessing such qualities as only belong to the minority of the 
human race, they might run the risk of being less sought after 
and less bought. Thus they search for faults with ardor, just 
as miners do for diamonds ; and when they think they have 
discovered a vice in their hero, they look upon it as the 
" Mogul " of their book. They make it shine, polish it up, 
show it in a thousand lights, bring it out as the striking part 
of their work, — the chief quality of their hero, who, unable to 
defend himself , is handed down, disfigured, to posterity. * Such 
are the strange perils incurred, as regards truth and justice, 
and the wrong done toward the great departed ; and this is 
Avhy their surviving friends are called on to protest against 
the false assertions of biographers. Those who have written 
on Lord Byron, unable to find this great " Mogul " (for Lord 
Byron had no vices), have all, more jor less, sought at least to 
draw the attention of their readers to a thousand little weak- 
nesses, mostly devoid of reality. Upon what basis, indeed, 
do they rest ? — Almost always on Lord Byron's words. Now 
we know what account should be made of his testimony when 
he speaks against himself. For instance, he has called him- 
self irritable and prone to anger, and biographers have found 
it very convenient to paint him with his own brush. Men 
never fail to treat those who depreciate themselves Avith equal 
injustice. Nor is this surprising. If it be true that we ai'e 
always judged on our faulty side, even though we endeavor 
to show the best, what must be the case if our efforts tend 
only to display our worst ? And besides, why should others 
give themselves the trouble of exonerating a man from blame 
Avho depreciated himself ? As it requires great discernment, 
great generosity, and very rare qualities, not to go beyond 
truth in self-esteem, biographers have not hesitated to declare 
Lord Byron, on his o-wn testimony, very irritable, and even 
very passionate ; but was he really so ? This is a question to 
be examined. 



Irritability of Lord Byron. 427 



CHAPTER XVIL 

lERITABILITY OF LORD BTEON. 

Was Lord Byron irritable ? With his poetic tempera- 
ment, his exquisite and almost morbid sensibility, so griev- 
ously tried by circumstances, it would be equally absurd and 
untrue to pretend that he was as impassible as a stoic, or 
l)hlegmatic as some good citizen who vegetates rather than 
lives. Did such qualities, or rather faults, — for they betoken 
a cold nature, — ever belong to Milton, Dante, Alfieri, and 
those master-spirits Avhose strength of passion, combined 
with force of intellect, have merited for them the rank of 
geniuses ? 

All more or less were, and could not fail to have been, 
susceptible of irritation and anger ; for such susceptibility 
was indispensable in the peculiar constitution of their minds. 
But he who finds sufficient strength of will to control him- 
self, when over-excitement is caused by some wounded feel- 
ing, does not that person approach to virtue ? Did Lord By- 
ron possess this power ? Every thing, even to the testimony 
of his servants, his masters, his comi-ades, proves that he did. 
In childhood he showed that he knew how to conquer him- 
self, and would use his power. He says, himself, that his an- 
ger was of a silent nature, and made him grow pale. Now, 
is not pale and silent anger of the kind that is overcome ? 
We know that Lord Byron's mother, while still young, suf- 
fered so cruelly from the simultaneous loss of her fortune and 
a husband she adored, that her temper became changed and 
embittered. She gave way to violent bursts of passion, quite 
at variance with her excellent qualities of heart ; thus she 
loved her son, but being veiy jealous of his affection, a trifle 
sufficed to make her launch out into reproaches and disagree- 
able scenes. This disposition on her part was not calculated 
to inspire the tenderness which her passionate fondness for 



428 Irritability of Lord Byron. 

him would otherwise have merited. But it was liis disa2> 
probation of such scenes that taught him to overcome in 
himself all outward tokens of anger, and to keep guard over 
his temper. Thus he opposed to the violence disj)layed by 
his poor mother a calm and silent demeanor that provoked 
her still more, it is true, but which proved great strength of 
will in him. After a violent scene that took place with her 
during one of his Cambridge vacations, he even determined 
on leaving home. 

" It was very seldom," says Moore, " that he allowed him- 
self to be so far provoked by her as to come out of his pas- 
sivity." • 

And by what he himself declares in his memoi*anda, writ- 
ten at the age of twenty-two, we see that he did not permit 
any external demonstration of his temper, and that under 
this discijiline it certainly had already improved. " It is es- 
l^ecially when I wish to keep silence, and when I feel my 
cheeks and brow grow pale," says he, " that it becomes very 
difficult for me to control myself; but the presence of a wom- 
an, though not of all women, suffices to calm me." 

To proceed with justice in any jjsychological study, we 
should never lose sight of the particular circumstances of the 
subject under treatment. Now, the circumstances amid 
which Lord Byron's moral and social life first began to un- 
fold itself were very irritating. 

While yet a boy Ave see his heart expand to love, to ten- 
derness, excited by the Avay in which the young lady received 
his attentions, by the gift she made him of her portrait, by 
meetings, by the encouragement her parents affiarded ; for, 
notwithstanding the disproportion of age, they looked favor- 
ably on a union that was equal Avith i-egard to fortune and 
position. And while he Avas thus beguiled, this girl — whom 
he considered an angel — deemed the timid youth too childish, 
and entered into a union with a man of fashion. 

On the eve of a long farewell to England, a friend AA'hom 
he loved Avith all the devotedness that belonged to a heart 
like his, shoAved the utmost indifference at his departure. 
Having attained his majority, he ought to have taken his 
seat in the House of Peers ; but his noble guardian, Lord 
Carlisle, Avhom he had ahvays treated with respect, and to 



Irritability of Lord Byron. 429 

whom he had lately shown the attention of dedicatnig his 
early poems to him, behaved toward him in an unjustitiahle 
manner. Not only did he refuse to present him to the House 
of Lords, but he even delayed sending the documents neces- 
sary for his admission, because forsooth the noble earl didnot 
like his toard's -inother! Lord Byron had published a charm- 
ing collection of jjoems that won for him equal applause and 
sympathy; but an all-powerful Review sought to humiliate 
him and crush his talent in the bvid by bringing out a bru- 
tal and stupid article against him. Nor was this all ; he had 
likewise the annoyance of money embarrassments inherit- 
ed from his j)redecessors in the estate. Leaving England 
under the sting of all these insults from men and fate, 
Avhich a phlegmatic temper could alone have borne with 
patience, Avould it have been astonishing if his young heart 
had felt irritation? But could it have existed without 
being perceived by those Avho lived with liim? Yet they 
say nothing aboiat it. His fellow-traveller was a friend 
and comrade of old, — Lord Broughton, then the Hon. Mr. 
Hobhouse. If Lord Byron had been of an irritable, vio- 
lent temper, who more than his daily companion would have 
2)erceived it, and suflered from it in that constant intercourse 
which ti'ies the gentlest natures ? Mr. Hobhouse had lived 
with Lord Byron at Cambridge, was one of his inseparable 
companions of Newstead, and was a member of the confra- 
ternity of the chaptei". Thus he knew him well, and if Lord 
Byron's temper had been unamiable, would he have under- 
taken such a long journey with him ? Lord Byron did not 
then possess even the prestige of celerity to render him de- 
sirable as a fellow-traveller. Well, on returning from this 
journey, Mr. Hobhouse w^as more attached than ever to Lord 
Byron, and, speaking of his qualities, expressed himself thus: 
— "To perspicacity of observation and ingenious remarks. 
Lord Byron united that gayety and good-liumor which keeps 
attention alive under the pressure of fatigue, smoothing all 
difficulties and dangers." 

Journeys taken together test tempers so much, that a 
good understanding which has withstood the trial of twenty 
years, is often compromised in a journey of twenty-four 
hours. Thus to choose again for oi;r travelling companions 



430 .Irritability of Lord Byron. 

those with whom we have ah-eady long journeyed, is the 
best testimony that can be rendered to their amiable disposi- 
tion. Well, this testimony was given by Mr. Hobhouse ; and 
while proving Lord Byron's excellent temj)er, it also proves 
the high character of Mr. Hobhouse. For we miist not for- 
get that malice and stupidity were inflicting a real persecu- 
tion on Lord Byron at the very moment when Mi*. Hobhouse 
hastened to rejoin him at Geneva, so as to travel again in 
company with his noble friend. They accomplished together 
an excursion into the Alps, and afterward crossed over them 
to visit Italy. On arriving at Venice, the tAVO friends sepa- 
rated for several months ; but in the spring they met again 
to visit together Rome and Florence. It was beside Mr. 
Hobhouse, wliile scaling the Alps, that the plan of "Manfred" 
was conceived ; and it was on the road from Venice to Rome 
that the fourtli canto of " Childe Harold " Avas Avritten : it is 
dedicated to Mr. Hobhouse, and he it was Avho made the vol- 
ume of notes, which forms, even independently of the text, a 
work so well appreciated in England. 

Having gathered from Lord Byron's first journey proofs 
of his good natural disposition, and of the control he exer- 
cised over himself, I shall also draAV others from his last : 
that journey from Cephalonia to Missolonghi Avhich proved 
so fatal, and Avhich alone, from all Lord Byron did, said, and 
wa'ote during the time it lasted, Avould sufiicc to reveal his 
fine character, and almost every one of his virtues. 

It is well known, that during this journey he imderwent still 
greater annoyances than in the one from Genoa to Cephalonia, 
which had already tried him so much. On seeing both des- 
tiny and the elements so pertinaciously combine against its 
success, one might really be tempted to embrace superstitious 
ideas, and see therein the efforts of his good genius raising 
up all sorts of obstacles in order to save him, and keep him 
from that fatal shore. I have already given the description 
of this journey so full of dramatic incidents ; and I have rela- 
ted Lord Byron's admirable conduct throughout, in the passa- 
ges Avhere proofs are adduced of his courage in danger, of his 
extraordinTiry coolness and extreme generosity. But that is 
not euough ; Ave must also examine him with regard to amia- 
bility of temper and the self-control he Avas able to exercise. 



Irritability of Lord Byron. 431 

"VVe have seen liim, when pressed on all sides to quit the 
Ionian Islands for the continent of Greece, yield to these en- 
treaties, although it was the most severe season of the year 
(28th December), and, notwithstanding a stormy sea, set out 
for Missolonghi. 

He refused the honor of an escort of Greek vessels, hiring 
instead a Cephalonian 3Ilstico, and a heavy JBombarda that 
waited for him at St. Euphemia. B\it on arriving near the 
harbor, he was driven back by contrary winds. Forced to 
remain on shore and wait, what sort of humor did he display 
under these annoyances ? Mr. Kennedy, who went to Avish 
him a pleasant journey, shall tell us. 

"I found him," says he, " quietly reading 'QuentinDur- 
ward,' and, as usual, in high spirits." 

Meanwhile, the sea grew calm. They set sail, and em- 
barked ; Lord Byron on the little Jlistico, Avith his doctor, 
two or three servants, and his dogs ; Count Gamba on the 
JBombarda, with the arms, horses, followers, baggage, pa- 
pers, money, etc. On arriving at Zante, persons came to 
oifer Lord Byron means of amusement, various comforts, etc. ' 
To accept might have been very pleasant for him ; but he 
knew that he was wanted at Missolonghi ; and not an hour 
Avould he lose after having transacted business wdth his 
bankers. He believed (for it had been announced) that 
Greek vessels were coming to meet him ; nor did he doubt 
that the Turkish fleet was still anchored at Lepanto. Sea 
and wind were favorable, the sky serene, fortune for once 
seemed to smile ; but it was only the better to deceive him. 
The Turks had been informed of liis departure ; and hoped 
to make an easy prey of him and his riches. They left the 
Avaters of Lepanto, and heading their course toward Patras, 
• set ofl" in pursuit of Lord Byron and his suite. 

At the close of a few hours, the JIisHco, which was a good 
sailer, lost sight of the Bombarda, of slojver motion. They 
halted opposite the Scrophes (rocks in Roumelia), to Avait 
for it ; and meanAvhile Lord Byron saAV a large A^essel bear- 
ing doAvn upon him. Could it be the Greek \-essel sent to 
meet him ? The Mistico fired a pistol at its approach, but the 
vessel did not ansAver fire. Was it the enemy, then ? On 
hearing the cries of the sailors on board, the captain could no 



432 Irritability of Lord Byron. 

longer doubt it : it was an Ottoman frigate, calling on them 
to surrender. Their sole hope of safety lay in the swiftness 
of their sails. Under cover of tte darkness, which left the 
Turks in fear lest the 3Iistico should be a fire-ship, and aid- 
ed by the almost miraculous silence that reigned, — for even 
the dogs, that had been barking all night, now held their 
peace, — the Uistico sped onward rapidly. At dawn of day 
it had arrived opposite the coast, but, owing to a contrary 
wind, was unable to get into port. At the same moment, 
another Turkish vessel, on the watch, closed the passage to- 
Avard the Gulf. An Ionian boat perceived the danger, and 
made signals from the shore for the 3Iistico not to approach. 
They then succeeded, all sails set, in throwing themselves be- 
tween the rocks of Roumelia, called Scrophes, where the 
Turkish vessel could not penetrate. It was amid these rocks, 
where he hardly remained an hour, that Lord Byron wi'ote 
Colonel Stanhope a letter, truly admirable for its generosity, 
patience, courage, coolness, and good temper ; a letter which 
it would seem impossible to pen under such circumstances, 
'and which makes Count Gamba say, when he quotes it in his 
Avork entitled " Last Voyage of Lord Byron in Greece :" — 

" Such was Lord Byron's style in the midst of great dan- 
gers. There was ahvays immense gayety in him, under cir- 
cumstances that render other men serious and full of care. 
This disposition of mind gave him an air of frankness and 
sincerity, quite irresistible, even with persons previously less 
Avell disposed toward him." 

Having hardly, and as if by a miracle, escaped from tliis 
danger, and being exposed every instant to assault from the 
Turks, having seen the Bomharda captured by the Ottoman 
frigate, did he complain of any thing personal to himself? 
No. His sole anxiety was for Count Gamba ; liis uneasiness 
was the danger to Avhich the Greeks with him wei-e exposed. 
As to his money looses — "Never tnind^'' said he, "donH think 
about it, toe have so^ne left. But we have no arms, excejit 
two carbines and some pistols ; and if our friends, the Turks, 
took a fancy to send their vessels to attack us, I greatly fear 
that Ave should only be four on board to defend ourselves." 

Not being able to knoAV that the unexpected apparition of 
the Turkish fleet had put out all their calculations, and pre- 



Irritability of Lord Byron. 433 

vented the Greek government from collecting the vessels 
sent from Missolonghi to meet him ; not knowing that Mis- 
solonghi, in great consternation, on learning the danger to 
Avhich he was exposed, was about to send other vessels in 
quest of him, other vessels that would no longer find him 
near the Scrophes rocks, he necessarily believed that nothing 
had been done to keep the promises made him. Under such 
a persuasion, would not some few harsh words have been 
most natural? And yet this is the language Lord Byron 
used : — 

" But where has it gone to ; the fleet that lets us advance 
without giving the least sign of any Moslems in these lati- 
tudes ? Present my respects to Mavrocordato, and tell him 
I am here at his disposal. I am ill at ease here (among the 
rocks), not so much for myself, as for the Greek child Avith 
me ; for you know what his destiny would be ! We are all 
in good health." 

The Jlistico had hardly been an hour among these rocks, 
Loi-d Byron's letter to Colonel Stanhoj^e was hardly finished, 
when the Turkish vessel on the lookout made toward them to 
give chase ; and they were obliged to fly without delay. Is- 
suing from the rocks, they directed their course, full sail, to- 
ward a little port of Acarnania, called Dragomestri, where 
they arrived before night. 

Lord Byron wished to continue his route by land ; but 
it was impossible. The mountains did not afford him better 
hospitality than the sea. It was the 1st of January ; his 
sole resting-place was the damp deck of the Mistico. There 
he slept, there he eat the coarse sailors' food ; and his fingers 
were so cramped with cold, that he could scarcely write. 
If he had complained a little of his hard fate, could one be 
much astonished ? Yet these are the t6rms in which he 
wrote to his two correspondents at Cephalonia. — It toas the 
month of January ; he toished every one a happy neio year^ 
apparently forgetting only himself. He then enteredinto some 
details about his " Odyssey " with so much calmness, that noth- 
ing seetned to touch hitn personally ; but his heart protested mean- 
while, and he coxdd not help showing uneasiness about the fate 
of his friend Count Ganiba, although persuaded that his deten- 
tion uHis only temporary : — 

T 



434 Irritability of Lord Byron. 

"I regret the detention of Gamba, etc., but the rest we 
can make up again, so tell Hancock to set my bills into cash 
as soon as possible, and Corgialegno to prepare the remainder 
of my credit with Messrs. Webb to be turned into money. 
We are here for t\\Q fifth day without taking our clothes off, 
and sleeping on deck in all iceathers, hut are all very icell and in 
good sj)irits. I shall remain here, unless something extraor- 
dinary occurs, till Mavrocordato sends, and then go on, and 
act accoi'ding to circumstances. My respects to the two 
colonels, and remembrances to all friends. Tell Ultima Anal- 
ise* that his friend Raids did not make his appearance with 
the brig, though I think that he might as well have spoken 
with us in or off Zantc, to give us a gentle hint of Avh'at we 
had to expect. Excuse my scrawl, on account of the pen 
and the frosty morning at daybreak. Byron." 

He writes at the same time to Hancock : — 
" Here we are — the JBombarda taken — or at least missing, 
Avith all the Committee stores, my friend Gamba, the horses, 
negro, bull-dog, steward, and domestics, Avith all our imple- 
ments of peace and war — also 8000 dollars ; but whether she 
will be a lawful prize or no, is for the decision of the govern- 
or of the Seven Islands. We are in good condition, consid- 
ering wind and weather, behig hunted by the Turks, and the 
difficulty of sleeping on deck ; we are in tolerable seasoning 
for the country and circumstances. But I foresee that we 
shall have occasion for all the cash I can muster at Zante and 
elsewhere. Tell our friends to keep up their spirits — and avc 
may yet do well. I hope that Gamba's detention will only 
be temporary. As for the effects and money, if we have them, 
well ; if otherwise, patience ! I disembarked the boy and an- 
other Greek, Avho were in most terrible alarm. As for me and 
mine, we must stick to our goods. I wish you a happy new 
year ; and all our friends the same. Yours, Bykon." 

Would an impatient, ii-ritable temper have acted thus, 
and preserved such serenity amid so many annoyances, j^riva- 

* Count Dellailecima, to whom he gives this name in consequence of a habit 
■which that gentleman had of using the phrase " in ultima analise"' frequently in 
conversation. 



Irritability of Lord Byron. 485 

tions, and svxfferings, of which one alone might suffice to make 
a stoic bitter ? 

But this was not yet all. After six clays of this life, 
hopeless of being able to continue by land, and getting no 
answer from Missolonghi (from whence, nevertheless, several 
gun-boats had been dispatched to meet him, and also the brig 
" Leonidas," which he only fell in Avith near the Scrophes), 
he resolved on setting out. But the wind, which had never 
ceased being contrary, soon changed into a furious tempest. 
Then Byron was truly sublime. His bark was thrown against 
enormous rocks ; the aifrighted sailors, seeing their lives in 
danger, and excited by fear, abandoned the vessel to seek 
refuge on the rocks. But he remained there, on board the 
vessel, Aijhich every one saw was sinking.* 

Encouraged by such an example, the sailors let go their 
hold on the rocks to try and free the vessel, which they suc- 
ceeded in setting afloat again ; but it was only for it to be 
forced back a second time by the angry waves. Then de- 
spair seized on them all ; they trembled for the general safety, 
and for the illustrious personage on board. He alone showed 
no emotion ; but calmly said to his doctor, who, in great 
alarm, was about to swim for the shore : " Do not leave the 
vessel while we have sufficient strength to guide her ; only 
when the water covers' us entirely, then throw yourself into 
the sea, and I will undertake to save you." 

And in the midst of those dangers he not only appeared 
calm, but his gay, playful humor, and his habit of observing 
the difterent aspects of every thing, did not abandon him. 
After having soothed and consoled those around him, he like- 
wise found means of amusement in the strong traits of indi- 
viduality which fear brought to light among his followers. 
The sailors Avho had remained on board, seeing the danger 
become so imminent, were about to betake themselves, like 
the rest, to the rocks ; but encouraged by Lord Byron's words 
and example, they remained at their post, and succeeded in 
bringing the vessel between two little islands, where they 
cast anchor. Thus Lord Byron, by his courage, firmness, and 
his great experience in the art of navigation, overcame this 
great peril, saving several lives, together with the money and 

. * Sec. the account given by Mr. Bruno, bis physician. 



436 Ieritability of Lord Byron. 

other means of assistance he was conveyhig to Greece ! The 
sailors esteemed themselves happy to be able to cast anchor 
between these islands, or rather these rocks, in order to pass 
the night ; but even what appeared fortunate, was destined 
to turn out the reverse in this fatal journey. 

If Lord Byron did not complain of the privation and 
ennui he " experienced, he did not, therefore, feel them less. 
After so many nights passed on the damp and dirty deck of 
his 3IisHco, he could not resist the desire of i-efreshing him- 
self, and seeking amid the waves that cleanliness which was 
an imperative want for his refined nature. And so, without 
reflecting on the rigor of the season (it was the month of 
January), he phmged into the troubled sea, and swam there 
for half an hour. Imprudence no less fatal to him, than to 
Alexander.* For it was then, undoubtedly, that he contract- 
ed the seeds of the malady which showed itself soon after, 
and under which he succumbed. At last he arrived at Mis- 
solonghi, Avithout having ceased for one instant to be threat- 
ened by the sea. He was expected there as if he had been 
the Messiah, says Stanhope ; and the consternation caused by 
the dangers he had gone through, gave place, on his arrival, 
to the most lively joy. Lord Byron met with a reception 
worthy of himself f But this enthusiastic joy, which found 
expression in songs as well as tears,' subjected his patience 
and good-nature to another sort of trial. 

" After eight days of such fatigue," says Count Gamba, 
"he had scarcely time to refresh himself, and converse with 
Mavrocordato, and his friends and countrymen, before he was 
assailed by the tumultuous visits of the primates and chiefs. 
These latter, not content with coming all together, each had 
a suite of twenty or thirty, and not unfrequently, fifty sol- 
diers ! It was difficult to make them understand that he had 
fixed certain hours to receive them. Their visits began at 
seven in the morning, and the greater part of them were 
without any object." This is one of the most insupportable 
annoyances to which a man of influence and consideration is 
exposed in the East, 

'"'' I saw Lord Byron hear all this toith the greatest patience.'''' 

* Alexander the Great imprudently bathed in the Cydnus, etc. 

f " Life in Italy." See how he was received at Missolonghi. . 



Irritability of Lord Byron. 437 

Could an irritable temper liave done so? For my part, I 
think that this journey alone, borne, as we have seen, by his 
letters and the unanimous testimony of his companions, with 
such perfect good-humor, that he could jest, be quite resigned 
to unavoidable evils, show indulgence to the faults of others, 
however great the suflerings entailed thereby on himself; 
and display great self-denial, strength of mind, and imper- 
turbable serenity, amid frightful dangers; all these qualities, 
I say, paint the moral nature of the man better than all anal- 
yses and commentaries. 

But alas ! while displaying his virtues, this journey also 
brings out his faults : since, prudent in behalf of others, he 
Avas not at all so for himself; and his want of i:)rudence j^lant- 
ed in him the germs of the disease Avhich was so soon to be 
fatally developed in that stifling atmosphei-e of Greece, then 
full of tumult and confusion. If the limits of this chapter 
allowed, we could multiply joroofs of his naturally amiable 
disposition at all periods of his life ; and we would show 
what he was in Switzerland, at Venice, Ravenna, Pisa, Genoa, 
and in Greece, up to his last hour, as he has been described 

by Shelley, Hoppner, M. de G , Medwin, Lady B , and 

so many others. But to those who have said he was irrita- 
ble because, feeling himself susceptible of irritation and anger, 
he declared himself to be so, I will content myself Avith an- 
swering simply by a fcAv lines boiTowed from the truthful 
conversations of Mr. Kennedy : — 

" Even during his last days on earth, he calumniated him- 
self For instance, he told me, that at a certain liour, every 
evening, he had intolerable fits of ill-humor. Well, Mr. Fin- 
lay and M always went to see him precisely at that fatal 

hour, and they invariably found him gay, pleasant, and ami- 
able, as usual." 

Mr. Finlay, a young English officer of merit and high in- 
telligence, whom Lord Byron thought very like Shelley, 
which, 2:)erhaps, increased his sympathy for him, and who 
only knew him two months before his death, says, in a letter 
written on Lord Byron to Colonel Stanhoj^e : — 

" What astonished me most was the indifference with 
which Lord Byron spoke to us of all the lying reports his 
enemies spread against him. He gave his vindication and 



^38 Irritability of Lord Byron. 

explanation with as much cahn frankness as if it had con- 
cerned another j^erson." 

And he declares his astonishment at seeing him submit to 
the lessons of morality, and the censures on his opinions and 
]>rinciples which Kennedy, in his extreme orthodoxy, made 
Jiim undergo.* 

I will also add, that Lord Byron was often heard to say 
that he had been in a frightful rage with his servants ; but, 
if they w^ere questioned, they Jcneio nothing at all about it. 
It is known, moreover, that his toleration and gentleness 
with them almost exceeded due bounds, and that, even when 
he had serious cause for chiding them, his severest reprimands 
were conveyed in jests and pleasantries. 

Persons who will not change their convictions, go so far 
as to say, — " Well, be it so. "We admit tliat he may have 
been calumniated in liis private life, and that his strange 
fancy of speaking against himself may have contributed to- 
ward it. But how do you explain the anger expressed by 
his pen? Do you forget his misanthropical invectives, his 
i:)ersonal attacks, his 'Avg^tar,' his epigrams ?" 

And I answer them : — " Do you forget that there are dif- 
ferent kinds of anger ? some that can never be vicious, and 
others that can never be virtuous ? The anger expressed by 
his pen — the sole kind that was real Avith him — requires to 
be explained, not excused or forgotten." 

" Let lis beware," says a great contemporary philosopher, 
" of him who is never irritated, and can not understand the 
existence of a noble anger. "f 

Be so good as to examine, without preconceived opinions, 
and Avithout prejudice, the nature of every kind of anger he 
displayed ; see if any were personal, egotistical, or whether 
they did not rather spring from some noble cause ; whether 
they were not rather the generous explosions of a soul burn- 
ing with indignation at evil and injustice, because it ever 
held in view the conti'ast afforded by an ideal of its own that 
was only too perfect ? 

It is impossible, for instance, not to see that his pen was 
guided by one of these generous impulses when he spoke of 
Lord Castlereagh. He had no personal, malevolent, interest- 

* Parry, 215. t Jules Simon. 



Irritability of Lord Byron. 439 

ed antipatliy toward this gay and fashionable nobleman. 
His pen was inspired simply by his conscience, that revolted 
at sight of the evils which he attributed to Lord Castlereagh's 
policy. It was. not the colleague, but the minister, that he 
wished to stigmatize together with his policy, which ajapear- 
ed to Lord Byron inhuman, selfish, and unjust. It was this 
same policy that caused Pitt to say : — 

"If we were just for one hour, we should not live a 
day." And again : — " Perish every principle rather than 
England !" 

What other statesman did Lord Byron attack except Cas- 
tlereagh ? But him he did detest with a noble hatred. 

" By what right do you attack Lord C ?" he was asked. 

" By the right," he replied, " that every honest man has 
to denounce the minister who ruins his country, and treads 
under foot every sentiment of equity and humanity." 

A few days before setting out on his last journey to Greece, 
he said to an English lady passing through Genoa : — 

" With regard to Lord Castlereagh personally, whom you 
hear that I have attacked, I can only say that a bad minister's 
memory is as much an object of investigation as his conduct 
while alive. He is a matter of history ; and whei'ever I find 
a tyrant or a villain, I Avill mark him, I attacked him no 
more than I had the right to do, and than w^as necessary. 

" Do not defend me, you will only make yourself enemies 
— mine are neither to be diminished nor softened." 

When Lord Byron wrote about Loi'd Castlereagh, imag- 
ination beheld in him the author of all the evils inflicted on 
Ireland, the man w^ho through a selfish feeling of nationality, 
dangerous even to England, had riveted the chains of all 
Eui'ope. 

" If he spoke and wrote thus of Lord Castlereagh," says 
Kennedy himself, " the reason was that he really thought 
him an enemy to the true interests of his country; and this 
sentiment, carried perhaps to excess, made him consider it 
just to condemn him to the execration of humanity."* 

What I have said with regard to his attacks on Lord Cas- 
tlereagh, may equally apply to all the satire hurled against 
other individuals, against governments and nations. His 

* Kennedy, 3.30. 



4-10 Irritability of Lord Byron. 

benevolence was so great and universal, that it rendered the 
idea of the sufferings endured by humanity quite intolerable 
to him. His love" of justice likewise was so great, that he 
became thoroughly indignant at seeing what he worshiped 
trampled under foot by individual or national selfishness, 
while deceit and injustice Avere reigning triumphant. Lord 
Byron conceived a sort of hatred and dislike for the wicked, 
and those who voluntarily prevented the well-being of men. 
And when thus indignant at some injustice, if he snatched up 
a pen, he could not help expressing himself with a certain 
kind of violence, in order to chastise, if he could not change, 
the guilty men who martyrized Ireland, crushed and degrad- 
ed Italy, and condemned England to the hatred of the whole 
world. The sparkling, witty strain, mocking at all human 
things, which had served as a weapon for his reason while 
asserting the interests of truth and injustice in Italy, and pro- 
testing against folly and evil, no longer sufficed him then. 
He required to brand with fire the limit where folly stops and 
crime begins. Thus it was not mocking, joking satire he 
Avould inflict on these great culprits ; but burning words to 
mark the limits where this should stop, and stigmatize them 
by condemning moral deformity. This is what he did, and 
wished to do, with regard to Castlereagh, and also with re- 
gard to the Austrians in Italy. Shall it be said that his lan- 
guage was occasionally too violent ; that the punishment 
went beyond the crime ? But, in the first place, condemna- 
tion was pronounced in the language of poetry ; and then, 
does not appreciation of the measure kept depend solely on 
the point of view taken by reason and conscience when they 
sat in judgment ? 

Shall it be said that the moral sense of these invectives 
was not always brought forward with all the clearness desir- 
able ? But let them be examined attentively, and then the 
fine sentiments to which they owe their origin will be under- 
stood. 

Let us read "Avatar," for instance, — "Avatar," teeming 
with noble anger, — and say if any jooetry exists emitting 
flame and light purer, and more intense in its moral life, more 
efficacious for keeping within the boundaries of that humane 
just policy from which Lord Byron never swerved. 



Irritability of Lord Byron. . 441 

If, ill the war lie waged against evil and its perpetrators, 
he did not outstej) the limits of merited iDunishment, never- 
theless he often did go beyond the limits of a quality (he pos- 
sessed not) which is raised to the rank of a virtue, but Avhich 
ajiplied, despite conscience, to our personal interests, is but 
selfishness and cowardice. And therein was he truly sub- 
lime ; for in attacking thus, not only the great men of the day, 
but likewise the prejudices, idolatries, and passions belonging 
to such a proud nation, he well knew the harm that would 
result to himself But Lord Byron was a real hero. So soon 
as his conscience spoke, he heard no other voice, but kept his 
glance fixed on the light of justice and truth beaming at the 
end of his career. AVithout looking to the right or to the 
left, without taking into account the obstacles and dangers 
which personal prudence counselled him to avoid, he held on 
his course ; exposed his noble breast to British vengeance 
pursuing him across the Channel and the Alps, and then also 
to Genevan and Austrian shafts that flew back again across 
the Alps and the Channel on the wings of dark, fierce cal- 
umny. 

Still I do not pretend to assert that, on some rare occa- 
sions, personal suffering did not give rise to irritation and an- 
ger. He belonged to humanity ; and if, despite the harsh 
trials to which his sensibility was exposed, he had escaped 
entirely from nature's laws, he would have been not only he- 
roic, but superhuman. 

It is then very possible that, in the sad days preceding, 
accompanying, and following on his separation from Lady 
Byron, he may have been irritable. Such a host of evils 
overwhelmed him at once ! He may have allowed to escape 
his lips at that time some drops of the ocean of bitterness 
Avith which his soul was overflowing. It is Certain also that 
Avhen the Edinburgh critics made such cruel havoc with his 
heart and mind, the over-excitement caused by this review 
had likewise for its source the Avounds inflicted on his self- 
love. Can Ave be astonished at it, Avhen we reflect that this 
senseless, Avicked criticism succeeded to, and contrasted 
strangely Avith, the praises aAvarded by such judges as Mac- 
kenzie and Lord Woodhouse ? They both had expressed 
their admiration, spontaneously, and Avithout knoAving the 

T 2 



442 . Irritability of Lord Byron. 

writer : one of them was the celebrated author of the " Man 
of Feeling," and the other had brought out many esteemed 
works, and was considered to be at the head of Scottish lit- 
erature. Besides, these cutting criticisms followed close on 
the strong admiration expressed by his friends, by all the 
society in which he was then moving, and by a mother who 
idolized him ! These verses, though not yet the highest ex- 
pression of his genius, were certainly full of charming tender- 
ness, grace, and naive sensibility ; moreover, they had been 
given to the public in such a modest way by a man so young 
that he might almost be called a child ! If he Avere not con- 
scious of his great superiority, of Avhich he must nevertheless 
have felt some prophetic presentiment — restrained, doubt- 
less, by modesty and timidity, — he must at least have been 
conscious that he had not, in any way, merited the brutality 
displayed in attacks which violated all the laws of just and 
alloAvable criticism. 

Lord Byron's soul revolted at it, and in his indignation 
repelling assault by assault, he OA'crstepped his aim ; for he 
certainly Avent to exli-emes. And yet, in the very paroxysm 
of such irritation, Avas a pei'sonal sentiment his first incentive ? 
No ! it Avas a good, generous, affectionate feeling that actua- 
ted him : fear lest his mother should be grieved at Avhat had 
occurred. 

He had scarcely been told how biting the criticism was, 
and he had not read it, Avhen he hastened to Avrite to his 
friend Beecher: — 

" Tell Mrs. Byron not to be out of humor with them, and 
to prepare her mind for the greatest hostility on their part. 
It will do no injury Avhatever, and I trust her mind Avill not 
be«rufiled. They defeat their object by indiscriminate abuse, 
and they never praise, except the partisans of Lord Holland 
and Co. It is nothing to be abused Avhen Southey and Moore 
share the same fate." 

In assuming this philosophical calm, AA'hich he really did 
arrive at latei-, but Avhich he Avas A-ery far from possessing at 
this time, — in forcing this languagje on his just resentment 
to console his mother, Avhen his Avhole being Avas agitated, he 
certainly made one of those efforts which betoken a soul as 
vigorous as it Avas beautiful. He used his pen as soon as he 



Irritability of Lord Byron. 443 

had satisfied this first want of his heart ; but the intensity 
of passion destroyed his equilibrium. 

When at Ravenna he Avrote : — 

" I recollect well the eftect that criticism produced on me ; 
it was rage, and resistance, and redress, but not despondency 
nor despair. A savage review is hemlock to a sucking au- 
thor ; the one on me knocked me down — but I got up again. 
This criticism was a master-piece of low jests, a tissue of 
coarse invectives. It contained many commonplace expres- 
sions, lowlived insults ; for instance, that one should be grate- 
ful for what one got ; that a gift horse ought not to be 
looked at in the month, and other stable vocabulary; but 
that did not frighten me. I resolved on giving the lie to 
their predictions, and on showing them, that, however dis- 
cordant my voice, it Avas not the last time they were to 
hear it." 

But when this heat had passed away, his innate passion 
for that justice so cruelly violated toward himselt, made him 
quickly recover his self-possession. He repented having writ- 
ten this satire, which he designated as insensate, and. wished 
to suppress it. He even judged it more severely than others. 

He wrote to Coleridge in 1815 : — 

" You mention my satire, lampoon, or whatever you like 
to call it. I can only say, that it was- written when I was 
very young and very angry, and has been a thorn in my side 
ever since : more particularly as almost all the persons ani- 
madverted upon became subsequently my acquaintances, 
and some of them my friends, which is heaping fire on an en- 
emy's head, and forgiving me too readily to permit me to 
forgive myself. The part applied to you is pert, and petu- 
lant, and shallow enough ; but, although I have long done 
every thing in my power to suppress the circulation of the 
Avhole thing, I shall always regret the wantonness or gener- 
ality of its attempted attacks."* 

On examining his conscience with regard to this satire, 
and passing judgment on himself, he adds, in a note to his 
own verses, after having given great praise to Jeffrey for his 
magnanimity, etc. : — 

"Jioas really too ferocious — this is mere insanity. — B.,1 81 6." 

* Monro, vol. iii. p. 159. 



444 Irritability of Lord Byron. 

And farther on : — 

" This is bad; because personal. — B., 1816." 

With regard to liis verses on ]iis guardian, Lord Carlisle, 
so culpable toward himself, he generously remarks : 

" Wrong also — the provocation was not sufficient to justify 
such acerbity. — B., 1816." 

To what he said against Wordsworth he simply adds the 
word, " Unjust.'''' 

And again, with reference to Lord Carlisle : — 

'■'■Much too savage^ ichatever the foundation may be. — B., 
1816." 

And at Geneva, 14th ot July, 1816, he writes: — 

" The greater part of this satire I most sincerely wish had 
never been loritten: not only on account of the injustice of 
much of the critical and some of the personal part of it, but 
the tone and temper are such as I can not approve. — Byron, 
Villa £>iodati, 181Q.'' 

Lastly, from Venice lie wrote to Murray, who wished to 
make a.superior edition of his works : — 

" With regard to a future large edition, you Tnay print 
all, or any thing, except ''English Bards^ to the rei^ublication 
of Avhicli at no time will I consent. I would not reprint 
them on any consideration. I don't think them good for 
much, even in point of poetry ; and, as to other things, you 
are to recollect that I gave up the publication on account of 
the Hollands, and I do not think that any time or circum- 
stances should cancel the suppression. Add to which, that, 
after being on terms with almost all the bards and critics of 
the day, it would be savage at any time, but worst of all 
nov:^ to revive this foolish lampoon." 

"Whatever may have been the faults or indiscretion of 
this satire," says Moore, " there are few who would now sit 
in judgment upon it so severely as did the author himself, 
on reading it over nine years after, when he had quitted En- 
gland, never to return. The copy which he then perused is 
now in possession of Mr. Murray, and the remarks which he 
has scribbled over its pages are well worth transcribing. On 
the first leaf we find : — 

* Now alludes to the ungenerous treatment received from many of these per- 
sons at the time of his separation. 



Irritability of Lorp Byron. 445 

" The binding of this volume is considerably too valuable 
for its contents. Nothing but the consideration of its being 
the property of another prevents me from consigning this 
miserable record of misplaced anger and indiscriminate acri- 
mony to the flames. Byron." 

To this ample reparation oftered on account of his early 
satire we must add the following paragraph, from the first 
letter he addressed to Sir Walter Scott, in 1812 : — 

"I feel sorry that you should have thought it worth 
while to notice the ' evil works of my nonage,'' as the thing is 
suppressed voluntarily ; and your exjilanation is too kind not 
to give me pain. The satire was >vritten when I was very 
young and very angry, and fully bent on displaying my 
wrath and my wit, and now I am haunted by the ghosts of 
my Avholesale assertions. I can not sufficiently thank you 
for your praise." 

Thus scrupulously did this conscientious man judge him- 
self. And not only do we find him repeating the same fine 
sentiment a hundred times, but he caused the whole edition, 
then still in the hands of the publisher, to be destroyed, 
which of course entailed a great sacrifice of money. He be- 
came intimate with the principal personages whom he had 
attacked ; and even, in order to testify that no resentment 
continued to exist in his mind against his guardian. Lord 
Carlisle, he seized the first opportunity that presented itself 
of writing in " Childe Harold " those pathetic generous lines 
on tlie death of his son. Major Howard. He acted just in 
the same way every time he thought he had^ny fault to re- 
pair. But could this same love of justice, that had guided 
him through life, have caused him equally to disavow what 
he said of Lord Castlereagh and of Ireland in "Avatar ?" of 
Southey and the Austrians at Venice ? or the greater part of 
the satirical traits contained in " Don Juan " and the "Age 
of Bronze ?" I do not think so. I believe, even, that if on ' 
his death-bed, he had been asked to retract some of his writ- 
ings, he would have answered as Pascal did. And this be- 
cause the sentiment which under all circumstances guided 
his pen did not arise from any jjersonal interest, but was only, 
to use the beautiful language of a great contemporary phi- 



446 Irritability or Lord Byron. 

losopher, " the indignation and revolt of the generous facul- 
ties of the soul, which, hurt by injustice, rose up proudly, to 
protest against human dignity, oiiended in one's own person 
or in that of others." 

This sentiment not being capable of change, neither could 
its consequences bring any repentance. According to Lord 
Byron, Castlereagh was a scourge for mankind. Faithful to 
this oi^inion, as to all his great principles, he wrote to Moore 
in 1815:— 

" I am sick at heart of politics and slaughters ; and the 
luck which Providence is pleased to lavish on Lord Castle- 
reagh, is only a proof of the little value the gods set upon 
prosperity, when they permit such rogues as he and that 

drunken corporal, old Bl , to bully their betters. From 

this, however, AVellington should be excepted. He is a man, 
and the Scipio of our Hannibal." 

Let people read the "Avatar," the eleventh octave and 
following of the dedication of " Don Juan," the forty-ninth 
and fiftieth stanzas of the ninth canto of " Don Juan," as well 
as the epigrams ; and they Avill have a fair idea of the gener- 
ous sentiments that provoked his indignation against the in- 
human policy of this i^iinister. They will understand why he 
wished to denounce him to the execration of posterity. As 
to his satirical verses and anger against the poet laureate, it 
has already been seen on whose side lay the fiiult, and how 
this jealous poet, through a combination of bad feelings, in 
which envy and revenge predominated, spared no means, no 
occasion, of doing him harm. Tims Lord Byron saw himself 
and his friend^enveloped in one of those darksome conspir- 
acies, forming a labyrinth of calumny, whence the purest in- 
nocence has no escape ; and he felt that justice violated in 
the person of his friends, by a man unworthy of respect, re- 
quired him, in justice, to brand the individual. And rightly 
did he so wdth his words of fire. When Ireland, that he 
' Avould fain have seen heroic under misfortune, degraded her- 
self by her conduct toward this minister and the king, on 
the occasion of their visit, he, touched with noble indigna- 
tion, resolved to punish and warn her; and his "Avatar" 
expressed these fine sentiments. When the prince i-egent, 
after having shown himself a Liberal and a Whig, denied his 



Irritability op Lord Byron. 447 

part, betrayed his party, and leagued with the Tories, Lord 
Byron's noble indignation burst forth in his verses, and, 
Av^henever occasion offered, he stigmatized such unworthy 
conduct. 

And a proof that it was the conduct of the individual, and 
not personal animosity, that guided his pen, may be found in 
the tact that a single ray of hope of seeing this moral deform- 
ity transformed into beauty, sufficed to make him change his 
tone immediately. When he learned the pai'don that had 
just been granted by George the Fourth to the guilty Lord 
Edward Fitzgerald, he forgot all past offenses ; his soul ex- 
panded to admiration and hope ; and he composed that beau- 
tiful sonnet, which so well reveals the aspirations of his great 
heart : — 

" To be the father of the fatherless, 

To stretch the hand from the throne's height, and raise 

Ills offspring, who expired in other da^ys 
To make thy sire's sway by a kingdom less, — 
This is to be a monarch, and repress 

Envy into unutterable praise. 

Dismiss thy guard, and trust thee to such traits, 
For who would lift a hand except to bless ? 

Were it not easy, sir, and is't not sweet 

To make thyself beloved? and to be 
Omnipotent hy mercy's means ? for thus 

Thy sovereignty would grow but more complete ; 
A despot thou, and j-et thj' people free, 

And by the heart, not hand, enslaving us." 

Bologna, A iigust 12, 1819. 

And then, as if poetiy did not suffice, he adds these lines 
in prose : — 

" So the prince has annulled Lord E. Fitzgerald's condem- 
nation. He deserves all praise, bad and good : it was truly 
a princely act." 

All Lord Byron's expressions of indignation that have been 
attributed to anger, belong really to his disinterested, heroic, 
generous nature. We may convince ourselves of this by fol- 
loAving him through life, beginning from childhood, at college, 
when he would plant himself in front of school tyrants, ask- 
ing to share the punishments inflicted on his friend Peel, and 
always taking the part of his weak or oppressed companions ; 
then, during his first youth, when an accumulation of unmer- 
ited griefs and injustice cast over him a shade of misanthropy. 



448 Irritability of Lord Byron. 

so contrary to his nature ; and, lastly, up to the moment 
when that noble indignation burst forth which he experienced 
in Greece, and which hastened his end.* 

This is the truth. Nevertheless, if, in early youth, he did 
sometimes go beyond the limits of Avhat may be feirly con- 
ceded to extreme sensibility, — to a certain hypochondriacal 
tendency of race, and more esj^ecially of his intellectual life ; 
if he really was sometimes wearied, fatigued, discouraged, in- 
clined to irritation, and to view things darkly, can it, there- 
fore, be said that he weakly gave way to a morbid disposi- 
tion? By no means. He always wished to sift his con- 
science thoroughly, — never ceased analyzing causes and 
symptoms, proclaiming his state morbid, and blaming him- 
self beyond measure, far beyond Avhat justice warranted, for 
a single word that had escaped his lips under the pressure of 
intense suifering. And even in the few moments of impatience 
occasioned by his last illness, he said, " Do not take the lan- 
guage of a sick man for his real sentiments." Lastly, he nev- 
er gave over struggling against himself; seeking to acquire 
dominion over his faculties and passions intellectually by 
hard study, and materially by the strictest regime. What 
could he do more ? it may be said. But if it be true that he 
had been irritable in his youth, that would only show how 
much he achieved ; for he must have conquered himself 
immensely, since at Venice, Ravenna, Pisa, Genoa, and in 
Greece, he certainly displayed no traces of temper, and all 
those causes which usually excite irritation and anger in oth- 
ers had quite ceased to produce any in him. 

"A mild philosophy," says the Countess G , " every 

day more and more took possession of his soul. Adversity 
and the companionship of great thoughts strengthened him 
so much, that he was able to cast off the yoke of even ordi- 
nary passions, only retaining those among the number which 
impel to good.f 

" I have seen him sometimes at Ravenna, Pisa, Genoa,when 
receiving news of some stupid, savage attack, from those 
who, in violating justice, also did him considerable harm. 
No emotion of anger any longer mixed itself up with his 
generous indignation. He appeared rather to experience a 

* See liis " Life in Italy." f Ibid. 



Irritability of Lord Byron. 449 

mixture of contempt, almost of quiet austere pleasure, in the 
struggle liis great soul sustained against fools." 

When Shelley saw him again at Venice, in 1818, and paint- 
ed him under the name of Count Maddalo, he said : — 

" In social life there is not a human being gentler^ more pa- 
tient, more natural, and modest, than Lord Byron. He is gay, 
open, and witty ; his graver conversations steep you in a kind 
of inebriation. He has travelled a great deal, and possesses 
ineffable charm when he relates his adventures in the differ- 
ent countries he has visited." 

Mr. Hoppner, English consul at Venice, and Lord Byron's 
friend, who was living constantly with him at this time, sums 
up his own impressions in these remarkable terms : — 

" Of one thing I am certain, that I never met with good- 
ness more real than Lord Byron's." 

And some years later, when Shelley saw Lord Byron again 
at Ravenna, he wrote to Mrs. Shelley : — 

" Lord Byi'on has made great progress in all respects ; in 
genius, temper, moral views, health, and happiness. His inti- 
macy with the Countess G has been of inestimable bene- 
fit to him. A fourth part of his revenue is devoted to benef- 
icence. He has conquered his passions, and become what na- 
ture meant him to be, a mrtuous manP 

Li concluding these quotations, no longer requisite, I hope, 
I will only make one last observation, that all which infallibhi 
changes in a had nature never did change in him. Friend- 
ship, real love, all devoted feelings, lived on in him unchanged 
to his last hour. If he had had a bad disposition, been capri- 
cious, iri-itable, or given to anger, would this have been the 
case? 



450 The Mobility of Lord Byron. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

LORD BYEOn's mobility. 

So much has been said of Lord Byron's mobility tliat it 
is necessary to analyze it well, and examine it under different 
aspects, so as to define and bring it within due limits. In 
the first place, we may ask on what grounds his biographers 
rested their opinion of this extraordinary mobility, which, ac- 
cording to them, M'ent beyond the scope of intellectual qual- 
ities rather into the category of faults of temper ? Evidently 
it was again through accepting a testimony the small value 
of which we have already shown ; namely. Lord Byron's own 
words at twenty-three years of age — that period when pas- 
sion is hardly ever a regular wind, simply swelling sails, but 
rather a gusty tempest, tearing them to pieces; and then 
again they grounded their opinion on verses in " Don Juan," 
where he explains the meaning of these expressions, — versa- 
tility and mobility. Moore, from motives we shall examine 
hereafter, found it expedient to take Lord Byron at his word, 
and to make a great fuss about this quality. In summing up 
his character, he reasons very cleverly on the unexampled ex- 
tent, as he calls it, of this faculty, and the consequences to 
Avhich it led in Lord Byron, Following in Moore's Avake, oth- 
er biographers have proclaimed Lord Byron versatile. Moore 
exaggerates so far as to pretend that this faculty made it al- 
most impossible to find a dominant characteristic in Lord By- 
ron. As if mobility were not, in reality, a universal quality or 
defect, — as if men could so govern themselves throughout life 
as to resemble the hero of a drama, where the action is con- 
fined within classical rules. 

"A man possessing the highest order of mind is, neverthe- 
less, unequal," says La Bruyere. " He suffers from increase 
and diminution ; he gets into a good train of thought, and 
falls out of it likewise. 



The Mobility of Lord Byron. 451 

" It is different with an automaton. Such a man is like a 
machine, — a spring. Weight carries him away, making him 
move and tui-n forever in the same direction, and with equal 
motion. He is uniform, and never changes. Once seen, he 
appears the same at all times and periods of life. At best, he 
is but the ox lowing, or the blackbird whistling ; he is fixed 
and stamped by nature, and I may say by species. What 
shows least in him is his soul ; that never acts, — is never 
brought into play, — perpetually reposes. Such a man will be 
a gainer by death." 

. La Bruyere also says, " There is a certain mediocrity that 
helps to make a man appear Avise." 

And what says Montaigne, that great connoisseur of the hu- 
man heart ? — 

" Our usual custom is to go right or left, over mountains or 
valleys, just as we ai-e drifted by the wind of opportunity. 
We change like that animal which assumes the color of the 
spots where it is placed. All is vacillation and inconstancy. 
We do not walk of ourselves ; we are carried away like unto 
things that float now gently and now impetuously, according 
to the uncertain mood of the waters. Every day some new 
fancy arises, and our tempers vary with the weather. This 
fluctuation and contradiction ever succeeding in us, has caused 
it to be imagined by some that we possess two souls ; by oth- 
ers, that two faculties are perpetually at work withni us, one 
inclining us toward good, and the other toward evil." 

Montaigne also says : — " I give my soul sometimes one ap- 
pearance, and sometimes another, according to the side on 
which I look at it ; if I speak variously of myself, it is be- 
cause I look at myself variously : all contrarieties, in one de- 
gree or othei', are found in me, according to the number of 
tiirns given. Thus I am shamefaced, insolent, chaste, sensual, 
talkative, taciturn, laborious, delicate, ingenious, stupid, sad, 
good-natured, deceitful, true, learned, ignorant, liberal, avari- 
cious, and prodigal, just according to the Avay in which I look 
at myself ; and whoever studies himself attentively, Avill find 
this variety and discordancy even in his judgment. 

" We are all parts of a lohole, and formed of such shapeless, 
mixed materials, that every part and every moment does its 
own work." 



452 The Mobility of Lokd Byrox. 

If, then, we all experience the varied influences of our pas- 
sions a hundred times in a lifetime, not to say in every twen- 
ty-four hours ; if we are sensible of a thousand physical and 
moral causes, perpetually modifying our dispositions, and our 
words, making us differ to-day from what Ave were yesterday ; 
if even the coldest and most stoical temperaments do not whol- 
ly escape from these influences, how could Moore be surprised 
that Lord Byron, who was so sensitive and full of passion, so 
hardly used by men and Providence, that he should not prove 
invulnerable ? Moore was not surprised at it in reality, it is 
true ; he only made-believe to be so, and that because Lorc^ 
Byron Avas Avanting in some of those virtues called peculiar- 
ly English. Lord Byron had no superstitious patriotism ; he 
did not love his country through sentiment or passion, but on 
duty and principle. He loA-ed her, but justice also! and he 
loved justice best. And in order to do homage to truth, he 
had committed the fault of saying a host of irrevercntial truths 
concerning that countrj^, and also many individuals belonging 
to it; consequently he had made many enemies for himself. 
Indeed, his enemies might be found in every camp : among the 
orthodox, in the literary Avorld, and the Avorld of fashion, among 
the fair sex, and iu the political Avorld. Moore, for his part, 
Avished to li\'e in peace Avith all these potentates, — the Avarm, 
comfortable, and brilliant atmosphere of their society had be- 
come a necessity for him ; and Avishing also, perhaps, to obtain 
pardon for his friend's boldness, he probably thought to con- 
ciliate all things by sparing the susceptibility of the great. In- 
stead, then, of attributing Lord Byron's severe appreciations 
to observation, experience, and serious reflection, he preferred 
declaring them the result of capricious and inconsistent mo- 
bility. But more just in the depths of his soul than he Avas in 
Avords, Moore, it is easy to see, felt painfully conscious of the 
Avrong done to his illustrious friend, and ardently wished to 
make his OAvn weakness tally with truth. What was the re- 
sult ? The brilliant edifice he had raised was so unstable of 
basis, that it could not stand the logic of facts and conclu- 
sions. While appearing to consider the excess of this quality 
as a defect, and calling it dangerous, he Avas all the time shoAV- 
ing that Lord Byron had strength to overcome any real dan- 
ger it contained ; he Avas giving it to be understood that tins 



The Mobility of Lord Byron. 453 

versatility of intellect might exist without the least mobility 
of principle ; he made out that mobility Avas the ornament of 
his intelligence, just as he had shown constancy to be the or- 
nament of his soul. Then, after having reasoned cleverly on 
this quality, yclept versatility when applied to the intelligence, 
and mobility when applied to conduct ; after having shown how ' 
predominant it must have been in Lord Byron through his 
great impressionability ; Moore says that Lord Byron did yield 
to his versatile humor, without scruple or resistance, in all 
things attracting his mind, in all the excursions of reason or 
fancy assuming all the forms in which his genius could mani- 
fest its power, transporting himself into all the regions of 
thought where there were any new conquests to make ; and 
that thereby he gave to the world a grand spectacle, displayed 
a variety of unlimited and almost contradictory powers, and 
finally achieved a succession of unexampled triumphs in every 
intellectual field. Then, in order to characterize completely 
this quality of Lord Byron, Moore further adds : — 

" It must be felt, indeed, by all readers of that work, and 
particularly by th(?se who, being gifted Avith but a small por- 
tion of such ductility themselves, are unable to keep pace 
Avith his changes, that the suddenness Avith Avhich he passes 
from one strain of sentiment to another, from the gay to the 
sad, from the cynical to the tender, — begets a distrust in the 
sincerity of one or both moods of mind Avhich interferes Avith, 
if not chills, the sympathy that a more natural transition 
Avould inspire. In general, such a suspicion Avould do him 
injustice ; as among the singular combinations Avhich his 
mind presented, that of uniting at once A^ersatility and depth 
of feeling Avas not the least remarkable." 

But, throughout this analysis by Moore, do Ave see aught 
save an intellectual quality? Does it not stand out in relief, 
a pure, high attribute of genius ? For this to be a defect, it 
Avould be necessary that, leaving the domain of intelligence, 
it should become mobility, by entering into the course of his 
daily life in extraordinary proportions. And hoAV does it, in 
reality, enter there ? Were his principles in politics, in re- 
ligion, in all that constitutes the man of honor in the highest 
acceptation of the term, at all affected by it ? Did his true 
affections, or even his simple tastes, suffer from the varied 



454 The Mobility of Lord Byron. 

impresses of his versatile genius ? In short, was Lord Byron 
inconstant ? Moore has sufficiently answered, since all he re- 
marked and said oblige us to rank constancy among Lord 
Byron's most shining virtues.* And as a human heart can 
not at the same time be governed by a virtue and 'its oppo- 
'site vice, what must Ave say to those Avho should persist (for 
there are some, doubtless, Avho will), despite all axioms, in 
considering Lord Byron as a changeable, capricious, fickle 
man ? I reply, that Lord Byron proved, once more, the truth 
of the observation made by that moralist, who said : " The 
most beautiful souls are those possessing the greatest variety 
and pliancy," and that he realized in himself, after a splendid 
fashion, the moral phenomenon remarked in Cato the Elder^ 
who, according to Livy, possessed a mind at once so versatile 
and so comprehensive, that whatever he did it might be 
thought he Avas born solely for that. 

I Avill acknoAvledge, then, the intellectual versatility and the 
mobility of Lord Byron, but on condition of their being re- 
duced to their real proportions ; of their being shown as they 
ever existed in liim, that is to say, under subjection to duty, 
honor, and feeling. Through his extreme impressionability, 
and his poAver of combining, in the liveliest manner, the great- 
est contrasts, through the j)leasurc he took in exercising such 
extraordinary faculties, and in manifesting them to others, 
Lord Byron sometimes assumed such an appearance of skep- 
tical indifference and caprice, that he might almost be said to 
show a certain intermission of faculties, and even of ideas. 
But if his Avords and Avritings are examined, it Avill be seen 
that this mobility Avas only skin-deep. It might affect his 
nerves and muscles, but did not penetrate into his system. It 
animated his writings occasionally, and of tener his AVords, hut 
never his actions! for, if in some rare moments of life, he 
abandoned his Avill to the SAvay of light breezes, that Avas only 
for very evanescent fancies of youth, in Avhich neither heart 
nor honor Avere at stake. And even then it Avas rather by 
Avord than by deed, as occurred at ISTcAvstead, Avhen he was 
tAventy years of age, and at Venice Avhen he Avas tAventy-eight. 
His energetic soul did not, like feebler natures, require in- 
constancy to aAvaken it. As to ideas, they were only change- 
* See the chapter on " Constancy." 



The Mobility of Lord Byron. 455 

able in him, Avlien they were by nature open to discussion or 
accessory y' and they remained floating, until having been 
elaborated by his great reason, he could admit them into the 
small number of such as he considered chosen and indisputa- 
ble. Then they found a sort of sanctuary in his mind, re- 
maining there sacred and unmoved, just like his true senti- 
ments of heart. 

His mobility, thus limited and circumscribed within due 
bounds by unswerving principles and the dictates of an ex- 
cellent heart, was thus sJiorn of all danger, and had for its 
first, result to contribute toward producing that amiability 
and that wonderful fascination which he exercised over all 
those who came near him. Moore quotes, on this head, the 
words of Cooper, who, speaking of jjersons with a changeful 
intellectual temperament, says, that their society " ought to he 
preferred in this icorld, for, all scenes hi life having two 
sides, one darJcand the other hrilliant, the mind 2^0 ssessing an 
equal admixture of melancholy and vivacity, is the one best 
organized for contemplating bothP Moore adds : — " It would 
not be diflicult to show that to this readiness in reflecting all 
hues, whether of the shadows or the lights of our variegated 
existence, Lord Byron owed not only the great range of his 
influence as a poet, but those powers oi fascination which he 
possessed as a man. This susceptibility, indeed, of imme- 
diate impressions, which in him were so active, lent a charm, 
of all others the most attractive, to his social intercourse, and 
brought whatever was most agreeable in his nature into j^lay." 

All those who knew him have said the same thing. This 
chai-m was the immediate consequence of his qualities ; but 
they produced another result, that justice requires to be men- 
tioned. Mobility being united in him with constancy and the 
most heroic firmness, added lustre to his soul through that 
great difiiculty overcome which amounts to virtue. ■ Moralists 
of all ages have generally found the virtue of constancy so 
rare, that they have said, — 

'■ Wait for death to judge a man." 

" In all antiquity," says Montaigne, " it would be diflicult 
to find a dozen men who shaped their lives in a certain steady 
course which is the chief end of wisdom."' 



456 The Mobility of Lokd Bykon, 

This is true as regards the generality of minds; but to 
overcome this difficulty, when one has a mind eager for emo- 
tion, variable, with width and depth capable of discerning 
simultaneously the for and against of every thing, and thus be- 
ing necessarily exposed to pei-plexity of choice, it is surely 
marvellous if a mind so constituted be also constant. Noav, 
Lord Byron personified this marvel. In him was seen the 
realization of that rare thing in nature, intellectual versatility 
combined with unswerving principle ; mobility of mind united 
to a constant heart. In short, to sum up : — He possessed the 
amount of versatility requisite to manifest his genius under 
all its^spects ; a degree of mobility most charming in social 
intercourse; and such constancy as is always estimable, al- 
ways a virtue, and which, united to a temperament like his,* 
becomes positively wonderful. 

♦ See the chapter on "Constancy." 



The Misanthropy of Lord Byron. 457 



CHAPTER XIX. 

LORD BYRON's misanthropy AND SOCIABILITY. 

Lord Byron hiis also been accused of misanthropy. But 
what is a misanthrope ? Since Lucian, this name has been 
bestowed on the man who owns no friend but himself; who 
looks upon all others as so many rogues, for whom relatives, 
friends, country, are but empty names ; wdio despises fame, 
and aims at no distinction except that conferred by his 
strange manners, savage anger, and inhumanity. 

When those who have known Lord Byron, and studied his 
life, compare him to this type, it may well be asked whether 
such persons be in their right understanding. The famous 
tower of Babel, and all the confusion ensuing, rise up to view. 

The excess of absurdity may give way, however, to some 
little moderation in judgment. It will be said, for instance, 
that there are different kinds of misanthropy. Lucian's 
" Timon " does not at all resemble Moliere's *'Alceste :" Lord 
Byron's misanthropy was not like either of theirs ; his was 
only of the kind that mars sociability, good' temper, and oth- 
er amiable qualities. In short, we shall be given to under- 
stand that Lord Byron is only accused of having liked soli- 
tude too much, of having shunned his felloio-creatures too 
much, and thought too ill of humanity. 

But these modifications can not satisfy our conscience. 
Still too many reasons of astonishment may be offered to al- 
low us to resist the desire of adding other facts and indis- 
putable proofs to those already adduced in the chapter where 
we examined the nature and limits of his melancholy at all 
periods of life, and throughout all its phases.* This chapter 
might even suffice as a response to the above strange accusa- 
tion. 

A better answer still would be found in all the proofs we 

* See chapter on " Melancliolv and Gavetv." 

u " 



458 The Misanthropy and Sociability 

have given of his goodness, generosity, and humanity. Nev- 
ertheless, "sve think it right rather to appeal to the patience 
of our readers ; so that they may consider with us,- more es- 
pecially, one of the peculiar aspects of Lord Byron's charac- 
ter ; namely, his sociability. 

That Lord Byron loved solitude, and that it was a want 
of his nature who can doubt ? As a child, Ave know, his de- 
light was to wander alone on the sea-shore, on the Scottish 
strand. At school, he Avas wont to withdraAV from his be- 
loved comj^anions, and the games he liked so Avell, in order 
to pass whole hours seated on the solitary stone in the church- 
yard at Harrow, Avhicli has been fitly called Hyron'^s Tomb. 
He himself descx'ibes these inclinations of his childhood in 
the " Lament of Tasso :" — 

"Of objects all inanimate I made 
Idols, and out of wild and lonely flowers, 
And rocks, wherebj' they grew, a paradise, 
Where I did lay me down within the shade 
Of waving trees, and dream 'd uncounted hours, 
Though I was chid for wandering; and the wise 
Shook their white aged heads o'er me, and said, 
Of such materials wretched men were made." 

Arrived at adolescence, he showed so little inclination to 
mix in society that his friends reproached him with his over- 
Aveening love for solitude. Amid the gay dissipation of uni- 
A'ersity life, he Avas often a prey to vague disquietude. Like 
the majority of great spirits that had preceded him at Cam- 
bridge, — Milton, Gray, Locke, etc., — he did not enjoy his stay 
there. He even made a satire upon it in his early poems. 
At a later period, Avlien he had acquired fame, at the A'ery 
height of his triumphs, when he Avas the observed of all observ- 
ers, he often caught himself dreaming on the happiness of es- 
caping from fashionable society, and getting home ; for, like 
Pope, he greatly preferred quiet reading to the most agreeable 
conA'ersation. 

All his life there Avere hours and days Avherein his mind ab- 
solutely required this repose. 

It may, then, truly be said that he loved solitude, and felt 
a real attraction for it. But Avould it be equally just to at- 
tribute this taste to melancholy, and then to call his melan- 
choly misanthropy ? Those Avho have deeply studied the na- 



Of Lord Byron. 459 

ture of a certain order of genius, and the phases of its devel 
opment, will discover something very diiferent in the im- 
pulse that attracted the child Byron to the sea-shore in Scot- 
land, and to the sepulchral stone shaded over by the tall trees 
of Harrow ? They will see therein, not the melancholy ap- 
parent to vulgar eyes, but the forecast of genius, to be re- 
vealed sooner or later, and with a further promise, in the an- 
tipathy shown for the routine of schools, and especially of the 
University of Cambridge, — a suflbcating atmosphere for gen- 
ius, equally uncongenial to Milton, Dryden, Gray, and Locke, 
who all, like Lord Byron, and more bitterly than he, exercised 
their satiric vein on it. As for the slight attraction he some- 
times showed for the world in his youth — in his seventeenth 
year — and which the excellent Mr. Beecher reproached him 
Avith, his feelings ai-e too well defined by the noble boy him- 
self for us to dai*e to substitute any words of ours in lieu of 
those used by him, in justification to his friend. 

Dear Beecher, you tell me to mix with mankind ; 

I can not deny such a precept is wise ; 
But retirement accords with the tone of iii}' mind ; 

I will not descend to a world I despise. 

Did the senate or camp my exertions require, 

Ambition might prompt me at once to go forth ; 

And, wliea infancy's years of probation expire. 

Perchance, I maj' strive to distinguish my birth. 

The fire in the cavern of Etna concealed 

Still mantles unseen in its secret recess : 
At length in a volume terrific revealed. 

No torrent can quench it, no bounds can repress. 

Oh ! thus the desire in my bosom for fame 

Bids me live but to hope for posterity's praise. 

Could I soar with the phoenix on pinions of flame, 
AVith him I would wish to expire in the blaze. 

For the life of a Fox, of a Chatham the death, 

What censure, what danger, what woe would I brave ! 

Their lives did not end when they yielded their breath ; 
Their glory illumines the gloom of their grave. 

Yet why should I mingle in Fashion's full herd.' 

Why crouch to her leaders, or cringe to her rules? 

Why bend to the proud, or applaud the absurd. 

Why search for delight in the friendship of fools? 

I have tasted the sweets and the bitters of love ; 

In friendship I early was taught to believe; 
INIy passion the matrons of prudence reprove ; 
" I have found that a friend may profess, yet deceive. 



-160 The Misanthropy and Sociability 

To me what is wealth ? — it may pass in an hour, 
If tyrant's prevail, or if Fortune should frown : 

To me what is title ? the phantom of power ; 
To me what is ftishion? — I seek but renown. 

Deceit is a stranger as yet to mj' soul : 

I still am unpracticed to varnisli the truth : 

Then why should I live in a hateful control? 

Why waste upon folly the days of my youth ? 1806. 

Thus it was the desire of fame that then engrossed his 
whole soul ; the wish of adding some great action to illustrate 
a name already ennobled by his ancestors. 

Subsequently, this ardent desire may have become weak- 
ened. Alas ! he had been made to pay so dearly for satisfy- 
ing it. But at the outset of his career this aspiration after 
glory, that belongs to the noblest souls, was the strongest 
impulse he had, — the one that often made him prefer the soli- 
tary exercise of intelligence to even the usual dissipation of 
youth, and when he did yield, like others, he punished himself 
by self-inflicted blame and contempt, often expressed in an 
imprudent, exaggerated manner. 

Nevertheless, the paths that lead to glory are various, and 
trod by many ; which should he choose ? Then did he feel 
the further torment of uncertainty. His faculties were vari- 
ous, and he was to learn this to his cost. He was to feel, 
though vaguely, that he might just as well aspire to the 
civic as to the militaiy crown ; be an orator in the senate, 
or a hero on the field of battle. 

Among all the careers presenting themselves before him, 
the one that flattered him least was to be an author or a lit- 
erary man. But he was living in the midst of young men 
■well versed in letters. Most of them amused themselves 
Avith making verses. To tranquillize his heart, and exercise 
his activity of mind, he also made some, but Avithout attach- 
ing any great importance to them. These verses were charm- 
ing ; the first flower and perfume of a young, pure soul, de- 
voted to friendship and other generous emotions. Neverthe- 
less, a criticism that Avas at once malignant, unjust, and cruel, 
fell foul of these delightful, clever inspirations. The injus- 
tice committed was great. The modest, gentle, but no less 
sensitive mind of the youth was both indignant and over- 
whelmed at it. Other sorrows, other illusions dispelled, fur- 



Of Lokd Bykon. 461 

ther increased his agitation, making a wound that might real- 
ly have become misanthropy, had his heart been less excel- 
lent by nature. But it could not rankle thus in him, and his 
sufferings only resulted in making him quit England with 
less regret, and throw into his verses and letters misanthrop- 
ical expressions, no sooner written than disavowed by the gen- 
eral tone of cordiality and good-humor that reigned through- 
out them; and, lastly, by suggesting the imjjrudent idea of 
choosing a misanthrope as the hero of the poem in which he 
was to sing- his own pilgrimage. 

This necessity of essaying and giving expression to his 
genius also made him desire solitude yet more. He found 
poetic loneliness beneath the bright skies of the East, where 
he pitched his tent, slowly to seek the road to that fame for 
which his soul thirsted. But when he arrived at it, — when 
he became transformed, so to say, into an idol, — did this ne- 
cessity for solitude abandon him ? By no means. 

^'■Ajyril 10th. — I do not know that I am happiest when 
alone," he writes in his memoranda ; " but this I am sure of, 
I never am long in the society even of her I love — and God 
knows how I love her — without a yearning for the company 
of my lamp and my library. Even in the day, I send away 
my carriage oftener than I use or abuse it." 

This desire, this craving for his lamp and his library, — this 
absence of taste for certain realities of life, — show affinities 
between Lord Byron and another great spirit, Montaigne. 
One might fancy one hears Lord Byron saying, with the 
other : — 

"The continual intercourse I hold with ancient thought, 
and the ideas caught from those wondrous spirits of by-gone 
times, disgust me with others and with myself." 

He also felt ennui at living in an age that 07ily 'produced 
very ordinary things. 

But whether he felt happy or sad, it was always in silence, 
in retirement, and contemplation of the great visible nature, 
carrying his thought aAvay to what does not the less exist 
though veiled from our feeble sight and intellect ; it was 
there, I say, that his mind and heart sought strength, peace, 
and consolation. 

His soul Avas bursting with mighty griefs when he arrived 



462 The Misanthropy and Sociability 

in Switzerland, on the borders of Lake Leman. He loved 
tljis beautiful spot, but did not deem himself sufficiently alone 
to enjoy it fully. 

"There is too much of man here, to look through 
With a fit mind the might which I behold," 

said he ; and he promised liimself soon to arrive at that be- 
loved solitude, so necessary to him for enjoying well the grand 
spectacle presented by Helvetian nature ; but, he added : — 

' ' To fly f lom, need not be to hate, mankind : 

Nor is it discontent to keep the mind 
Deep in its fountain, lest it over boil 
In the hot throng." 

And then he continues : — 

"I live not in myself, but I becoinc 
Portion of that around me ; and to me 
High mountains are a feeling." 

Thus, even in the midst of the beloved solitude so neces- 
sary to him, there was no misanthropy in his thoughts or 
feelings, but simply the desire of not being disturbed in his 
studies and Reveries. Lord Byron often said, that solitude 
made him better. He thought, on that head, like La Bru- 
y6re : — ^^All the evil in t<5," says that great moralist, "springs 
from the impossibility of our being alone. Thence we fall into 
gambling^ luxury, dissipatiofi, ^cit^e, icomen, ignorance, slander- 
ing, envy, forgetfulness of self, and of God.'"' If the satisfac- 
tion of this noble want were to be called misanthropy, few 
of our great spirits, whether philosophers, poets, or orators, 
could escape the accusation. For, with almost all of them, 
the taste for retirement and solitude has been likewise a ne- 
cessity : a condition without which we should have lost their 
greatest chefs-d'oeuvre. The biography of the noblest minds 
leaves no doubt on this head. But if Lord Byron did not 
use solitude like a misanthrope, if he loved it solely as a 
means, and not as an end, so that we may even say it Avas 
Avith him an antidote to misanthropy, can we equally give 
proof of his sociability ? To clear up this point, we have 
only to glance at his whole life. For the sake of avoiding 
repetition, let us pass over his childhood, so full of tender- 
ness, and ardor for youthful pastimes ; his boyhood, all devo- 



% Of Lord Byron. 463 

ted to feelings affectionate and passionate; his university 
life, where sociability seemed to predominate over regular 
study ; the vacations, when it was such pleasure to act plays, 
and he was the life of amateur theatres, — a time that has left 
behind it such an enthusiastic memory of him, that when 
Moore, some years after Lord Byron's death, went to obtain 
information about it from the amiable Pigott family, not one 
member could be found to admit that Lord Byron had the 
smallest defect. Let us also pass over his sojourn at New- 
stead, when his sociability and gayety appear even to have 
been too noisy ; and let us arrive at that period of his life 
when he began to be called a misanthrope, because he gave 
himself that appellation, because real sorrows had east a 
shade over his life, and because, wishing to devote himself to 
graver things, his object was to withdraw from the society 
of gay, noisy companions, and then to mature his mind in 
distant travel. He left his native land, but in company with 
his friend Hobhouse, a man distinguished for his intelligence, 
and who, instead of testifying to his fellow-traveller's misan- 
thropy, bears witness, on the contrary, to his amiable, sociable 
disposition. 

When this friend was obliged to take leave of him in 
Greece, and return to England, Lord Byron frequented th.e 
society of pleasant persons like Lord Sligo, Mr. Bruce, and 
Lady Hester Stanhope, whom he met at Athens, alleviating 
his studious solitude by intercourse with them. 

When he also returned to England, after two years of ab- 
sence, great misfortunes overwhelmed him. He lost succes- 
sively his mother, dear friends, and other loved ones. Not 
to sink beneath these accumulated blows, and mistrusting 
his own strength, he called in to aid him the society of his 
friends. 

" My dear Scrope," wrote he, " if you have an instant, 
come and join me, I entreat you. I want a friend; I am in 
utter desolation. Come and see me ; let me enjoy as long as 
I can the company of those friends that yet remain," 

Some time after, having attained the highest popularity, 
and his mind being soothed by friendship even more than by 
fame, he entered into the fashionable society in which his 
rank entitled him to move. 



464 The Misanthropy and Sociability 

He frequented the world very much at this period, cultiva- 
ting it assiduously. A moment even came when he seemed 
to be completely absorbed by gayety. Sometimes going to 
as many as fourteen assemblies, balls, etc., in one evening. 
"He acknowledged to me," says Dallas, "that it amused 
him." Did not his genius suffer then from the new infatua- 
tion ? So courted, flattered, and surrounded by temptations, 
did not this worldly life jDrove too seductive, hurtful to his 
mind, heart, and independence of character ? Did he draw 
from the world's votaries his rules of judgment, his ways of 
thought ? Did he yield Avhen brought in contact with that 
terrible English laic of opinion ? No ; Lord Byron was safe 
from all such dangers. Amid the vortex in M'hich he allow- 
ed himself to be Avhirled along, his mind was never idle. In 
the drawing-rooms he frequented, liis intellectual curiosity 
found field for exercise. Though so young, he had already re- 
flected much on human nature in general ; but he still required 
to study individuals. It Avas in society that his extraordi- 
nary penetration could find out true character, discover the 
reality lurking under a borrowed mask. The great world 
formed an excellent school to discipline his mind. There he 
found subjects for observation that he afterward put in or- 
der, and brought to maturity in retirement. 

" Wherever he went," says Moore, " Lord Byron found 
field for observation and study. To a mind with a glance so 
deep, lively, and varied, every place, and every occupation, 
presented some view of interest; and, whether he Avere at 
a ball, in the boxing-school, or the senate, a genius like his 
turned every thing to advantage." 

And if salons in general were powerless to exercise any 
bad influence over him, this impossibility was still greater 
with regard to London salons. Without adopting as exact 
the picture drawn of them by a learned academician,* in a 
book more Avitty than true, Avherein we read : — " that under 
pain of passing for eccentric, of giving scandal or exciting 
alarm, English people are forbidden to speak of others or 
themseh^es, of politics, religion, or intellectual things or mat- 
ters of taste ; but only of the environs, the roundabouts, a 
picnic, a \dsit to some ruin, a fashionable preacher, a fox-hunt, 

* 51. Xisanl. 



Of Lord Byron. 465 

and the rain, — that never-ending theme kindly furnished by 
the inconstant climate ;" without, I say, adopting this picture 
as true, for in England it must be considered a clever carica- 
ture, it is nevertheless certain, that the discipline of fashion- 
able London salons requires independence of mind to be in a 
measure sacrificed. The tone reigning in these salons, which 
are only opened during the season, is quite different from 
that produced by the open-hearted hospitality which renders 
English country residences so very agreeable. Could Lord 
Byron long take pleasure in the salons of the metroi^olis, 
where every thing is on the surface and noisy, where one may 
say that people are content with simply showing themselves, 
intending concealment all the while ; or where they show 
themselves ^ohat they are not; where set forms, or a vocabu- 
lary of their own, so far limits allowable subjects of conver- 
sation, that fools may easily have the advantage over clever 
men (for intellect is looked upon as suspicious, dangerous, 
bold, and called an eccentricity). Lord Byron, so frank, and 
open-hearted, loving fame, and having a sort of presentiment 
that Heaven would not accord him sufficient time to reap his 
full harvest of genius, consequently regretting the moments 
he was forced to lose ; must he not, after seeking amuse- 
ment in these assemblies, soon have found that they lasted 
too long, and were too fatiguing ? Must he not often have 
well-nigh revolted against himself, felt something cold and 
heavy restraining his outburst of soul, something like a sort 
of slavery ; must he not have understood that it was requi- 
site for him to escape from such useless pastimes in order to 
re-invigorate himself by study, in the society of his own 
thoughts, and those of the master-spirits of ages ? Yes, Lord 
Byron did experience all that. Ennui of the world called him 
back to solitude. We can not doubt it, he said so himself: — 
" Last night, 'party at Lansdowne House ; to-night, party 
at Lady Charlotte Greville's — deplorable icaste of time, and 
loss of temper, nothing imparted, nothing acquired — talking 
without ideas — if any thing like thought were in my mind, 
it was not on the subjects on which we were gabbling. 
Heigho ! and in this way half London pass what is called 
life. To-morrow, there is Lady Heathcote's — shall I go? 
Yes; to punish myself for not having a pursuit." 

U 2 



466 The Misanthropy and Sociability 

And, elsewhere : — 

" Shall I go to Lansdowne's ? to the Berry's ? They are 
all pleasant ; but I don't know, I don't think that soirees im- 
prove one." 

He will not go into the world : — 

" I don't believe this worldly life does any good ; how 
could such a world ever be made? Of what use are dan- 
dies, for instance, and kings, and fellows at college, and wom- 
en of a certain age, and many men of my age, myself fore- 
most ?" 

Having changed his apartments, he had not yet got all 
his books ; Avas reading without order, composing nothing ; 
and he suffered in consequence. " I must set myself to do 
something directly ; my heart already begins to feed on it- 
self" He accuses himself of not profiting enough by time. 
" Twenty-six years of age ! I might and ought to be a 
Pasha at that age. ''I ''gin to he loeari/ of the s?««.'" But let 
him be with a clever friend, like Moore, for instance, and, oh ! 
then the ennui of salons becomes metamorphosed into pleas- 
vire for him, without taking away his clearsightedness as to 
the world's worth. 

"Are you going this evening," v/rites ho to Moore, " to 
Lady Cahir's ? I will, if you do ; and wherever we can unite 
in follies, let us embark on the same ship of fools. I went to 
bed at five, and got up at nine." 

And elsewhere, after having expressed his disappointment 
at seeing Moore so little during the season, he calls London 
" a populous desert, where one should be able to keep one's 
thirst like the camel. The streams are so few^ and for the 
most part so mxiddn?'' 

And ten years later, in the fourteenth canto of " Don 
Juan," he said, speaking of fashionable London society : — 

"Although it seems both prominent and pleasant, 
There is a sameness in its gems and enninc. 
A dull and family likeness through all ages, 
Of no gi'eat promise for poetic pages. 

XVI. 

" With much to excite, there's little to exalt ; 

Nothing that speaks to all men and all times; 
A sort of varnish over every fault ; 

A kind of com.monplace, even in their crimes ; 



Of Lord Byron. 467 

Factitious passions, wit without much salt, 

A want of that true nature which sublimes 
Whate'er it shows with truth; a smooth monotony 
Of character, in those at least who have got any. 



" Sometimes, indeed, like soldiers off parade, 

They break their ranks and gladh' leave the drill ; 

But then the roll-call draws them back afraid. 

And the}'' must be or seem what they were : still 

Doubtless it is a brilliant masquerade ; 

But when of the first sight you have had your fill, 

It palls — at least it did so upon me, 

This paradise oi pleasure and ennui.'''' 

It was thus that he judged what is called the great world, 
the fashionable crowd. Yet never having ceased to frequent 
it, he also might have said, with Pliitarch : — " My taste leads 
me to fly the world ; but the gentleness of my nature brings 
me back to it again," 

The best proof, however, of his sociable disposition does 
not lie in this fact of his going much to great assemblies, 
since he submitted to, rather than sought after that ; it con- 
sists in the pleasure he always took in the society of friends, 
and those Avhom he loved ; in the want of intimacy which he 
ever experienced. In such quiet little circles he was truly 
himself, quite different to what he appeared in salons. Then 
only could he be really known. His wit, gayety, and sim- 
plicity were unveiled solely for friends and intimates. He, 
so light-hearted, became serious amid the forced laughter of 
drawing-rooms ; he, so witty, waxed silent and gloomy amid 
unmeaning conventional talkativeness. Those who only saw 
him in salons, or on foshionable staircases, during the four 
years he passed in England, did not really know him ; is it 
surprising that he should have been wrongly judged ? Moore 
alone has tolerably well described the agreeable, sociable, 
gay, kind being Lord Byron was. 

When he quitted England, his sociable disposition did not 
abandon him, though his soul was filled with bitterness. He 
had scarcely arrived at Geneva, when he became intimate 
with Shelley. He made him the companion of his walks, 
passed whole days and evenings in his society, and that of 
his amiable wife. Several London friends came to join him 
in Switzerland. In his excursions over the Alps, Lord 



468 The Misanthropy and Sociability 

Broughton (tlion INIr. Hobliouse) was always his faithful 
companion. He frequented and ajDpreciated then, more than 
he had ever done before in England, the society of Madame 
de Stael at Coppet, because it was tiicre and not in draAving- 
rooms that this noble-hearted woman showed herself what 
she was. Always attracted by high intellect, he became in- 
timate with Count liossi, entertaining so great a sympathy 
for him, that often when the count was about to leave him 
and return to Geneva, Lord Byron retained him by his en- 
treaties. As to the natives of Geneva, as he detested Cal- 
vinism, and knew that they believed the calumnies wickedly 
spread abroad against him by some of his country-people, he 
did not see them often, for he did not like them. " What 
are you going to do in that den of honest men," said he one 
day to Count Rossi, who Avas pvejiaring to leave. On arriv- 
ing at Milan, he immediately adopted the style of life usual 
there. Every evening he went to the theatre, occupying M. 
de Breme's box, together with a group of young and clever 
men ; among them I may name Silvio Pellico, Abbe de 
Bremc, Monti, Porro, and Stendhal (Beyle), who have all 
unanimously testified to his amiability, social temper, and 
fascinating conversation. At Venice, he allowed himself to 
be pi'esented in the most hospitable mansions of the nobility ; 
particularly distinguishing those where Countess Albruzzi 
and Countess Benzoni jn-esided, for lie always Avent to one or 
other of these ladies after leaving the theatre. Nor did he 
disdain, during the early part of his stay at Venice, even the 
official salon of the Comtesse de Goetz. But his aversion for 
Austrian oppression and the perfidy of the official press soon 
obliged him to Avithdraw ; for the oppressors of Venice, know- 
ing him to be a formidable enemy, sought to discredit him by 
spreading all sorts of calumnious reports against him and his 
priA'ate charactei*.* 

It has been seen in his " Life in Italy " how he divided 
his time at Venice, and the impression he made Avherever 
there had not been a preconceived purpose of judging him 
unfavorably. In the morning, his first Avalk Avas always di- 
rected tOAvard the convent of the Armenian Fathers, in the 
island of San Lazzaro. He went there to study their lan- 
* See his " Life in Italj'." 



Of Lord Byron. 469 

guage; and these good monks conceived an extreme affec- 
tion for him. Afterward he would cross the Laguna going 
to the Lido, where his stables were. He was accustomed to 
ride on horseback with the different friends who chanced 
to arrive from England : such as Hobhouse, Monk Lewis, 
Rose, Kinnaird, Shelley, and more particulai-ly still with Mr. 
Hoppner, Consul-general for England at Venice, a man of 
the noblest stamjD, much beloved by Lord Byron, and who, 
in the account he has left of this intercourse, can not find 
Avords adequate for exj^ressing all he wislied to say of the 
charming social qualities Lord Byron displayed at Venice. 
'"'•People have no idea^'' says he, " of Lord Byron'' s gayety, vi- 
vacity, and amiability." He followed Italian customs, went 
every evening to the theatre, wliere his box was always filled 
with friends and acquaintances ; and after that, generally 
spent the remainder of the evening or night, according to the 
then custom of Venice, in the most distinguished circles of 
the town, principally at the houses of Countess Albruzzi and 
Countess Benzoni, where he was not only welcome, but so 
much liked, that these salons were voted dull when he did 
not appear. Lastly, his social qualities and amiability gave 
so much pleasure at Venice, and the inhabitants were so de- 
sirous of keeping him among them, that his departure for 
Ravenna actually stirred uj) malice, quite foreign to the usu- 
al simplicity characterizing Venetian society.* 

The friends who came to see him there, — Hobhouse, Lewis, 
Kinnaird, Shelley, Rose, etc., — succeeded each other at short 
intervals, and their arrivals were so many fetes for him. But 
while he was leading this sociable life, vulgar tourists, who 
had not been able to succeed in getting presented to him, 
took their revenge, by repeating in every direction fables 
they had gleaned from the gondoliers for a few pence — viz., 
that Lord Byron was a misanthrope and hated his country- 
men. Mr. Hoppner, who was an ocular witness of the life 
which Lord Byron led at Venice, and whose testimony is so 
worthy of respect, told Moore how much annoyance Lord By- 
ron endured from English travellers, bent on following him 
everywhere, eyeglass in hand, staring at him with imperti- 
nence or affectation during his walks, getting into his palace 
under some pretext, and even penetrating into his bedroom. 

* S-eliis "Life in Ttilv." 



470 The Misanthropy and Sociability 

" Thence," says he, " his bitterness toward them. The 
sentiments he has expressed in a note termed cynical, as well 
as the misanthropical expressions to be found in his first 
poems, are not at all his natural sentiments.''^ 

And then he adds that he is very certain " 7iever to have 
met with in his lifetime more real goodness than in Lord JSy- 
ronP 

Moore, also, is indignant at all these perfidious inven- 
tions : — 

"Among those minor misrepresentations," says he, " of 
which it was Lord Byron's fixte to be the victim, advantage 
was at this time taken of his professed distaste to the En- 
glish, to accuse him of acts of inhospitality, and even rude- 
ness, toward some of his fellow-countrymen. How far difier- 
ent was liis treatment of all who ever visited him, many 
grateful testimonies might be collected to prove ; but I shall 
here content myself with selecting a few extracts from an 
account given to me by Mr. Joy, of a visit Avhich, in company 
with another English gentleman, he paid to the noble poet, 
during the summer of 181 7, at his villa on the banks of the 
Brenta. After mentioning the various civilities they had ex- 
perienced from Lord Byron ; and, among others, his having 
requested them to name their own day for dining with him : 
— ' We availed ourselves,' says Mr. Joy, ' of this considerate 
coxirtesy by naming the day fixed for our return to Padua, 
Avhen our route would lead us to his door ; and we Avere avcI- 
comed with all the cordiality Avliich was to be expected from 
so friendly an invitation. Such traits of kindness in such a 
man deserve to be recorded on account of the numerous slan- 
ders heaped upon him by some of the tribes of tourists, who 
resented, as a personal affront, his resolution to avoid their 
impertinent inroads upon his retirement. 

" ' So far from any appearance of indiscriminate aversion 
to his countrymen, his inquiries about his friends in England 
were most anxious and particular, 

" 'After regaling us with an excellent dinner (in which, 
by-the-by, a very English joint of roast-beef showed that he 
did not extend his antipathies to all John Bullisms), he took 
us in his carriage some miles on our. route toward Padua, 
after apologizing to my fellow-traveller for the separation, on 



Of Lord Byron. 471 

the score of his anxiety to hear all he could of his friends in 
England : and I quitted liim with a confirmed impression of 
the strong ardor and sincerity of his attacliment to those by 
whom he did not fancy himself slighted or ill-treated!'" 

It has been seen elsewhere* that Mr. Rose, speaking of 
Lord Byron's sociable temper at Venice, said his presence sxf- 
ficedto diffuse joy and gayety in the salons he freqxientedP 

When any worthy persons among his countrymen arrived, 
his house., his time, his purse were at their service. 

For further proof, let people only read the details Captain 
Basil Hall gave Murray of his intercourse with Byron. 

'''His loitty, clever conversation,'''' says Shelley, who visited 
him at Venice in 1 81 7, " enlivened our lointer nights and taught 
tne to Tcnoxo my oion soul. Day dawned upon us, ere loe per- 
ceived vnth surprise that we w.ere still listening to him.'''' 

When he went from Venice to Romagna, he passed by Fcr- 
rara. But though eager to arrive where his heart summon- 
ed him, he did not fail delivering the letters of introduction 
given him by friends. At Ferrara he made the acquaintance 
of a noble family, and went into society there, si^eaking of it 
afterward in the most flattering manner.f 

At Ravenna, he frequented all the salons Avhere he Avas in- 
troduced ; and at the request of Count G , became the 

cavcdiere servente of the young countess. According to the 
custom of the country, he accompanied her to assemblies or 
theatres, or spent his evenings in her family circle. At Pisa, 
lie held aloof from the world, because his friends, the Gam- 
bas, who had taken refuge there in consequence of the trou- 
bles and political enmities existing in Romagna, did not wish 
to mix in society. But he passed all his evenings regularly 
with them, either at their house, or sometimes dispensing hos- 
pitality at home with the greatest aifability and kindness. 

" I believe I can not give a better proof of the sociability 
of Lord Byron's disposition," says Medwin, " than by speak- 
ing of the gayety that prevailed at his Wednesday dinner- 
pai'ties at Pisa. His table, when alone, was more than fru- 
gal ; but on these occasions, every sort of wine, and all the 
delicacies of the season, were served up in grand display, 
worthy of the best hauses. I never knew any one who did 

* See chapter on " Gayety and Melanclioly." f See his " Life in Italy." 



472 The Misanthropy and Sociability 

the honors of his house with greater affability and hospitali- 
ty than Lord Byron. 

"The vivacity of his wit, the warmth of his eloquence, are 
things not to be expressed. Could we forget the tone of his 
voice, or his gesture, adding charm to all he said ?"* 

At Pisa he generally received in the morning all those 
who wished to see him, and among others several of his 
countrymen, mostly acquaintances or friends of Shelley, who 
also went to see him every day. In the afternoon he rode 
out on horseback, still followed by his countrymen, and by 
the young Count Gamba ; amusing himself Avith them till 
evening came, in shooting exercises or in long excursions. 
We have already said how he employed his evenings. In 
fact, he was so seldom alone that people could not understand 
how he found time for writing. He did find it, however, and 
without subtracting from social intercourse. Nor was it 
solely because he composed so rapidly, but likewise because 
he gave to occupation the hours that young men are wont to 
pass in idle, not to say vicious, amusements. When he went 
from Pisa to a villa situated on the hills that overlook Leg- 
horn and the Mediterranean, in order to pass the great heats 
of summer there, an American painter, JMr. West, who had 
been commissioned by an American society, requested him to 
sit for his picture. Lord Byron could not give him much 
time, and the portrait was not successful. But Mr. West, 
who, if not a good artist, possessed a just and cultivated mind, 
drew a pictxire of his moral character as true as it was flat- 
tering, — his pen doing him better service than his brush : — 

" I retui'ned to Leghorn," says he, " hardly able to per- 
suade myself that this was the proud misanthrope Avhose 
character had ever appeared shrouded in gloom and mystery. 
For I never remember having met with gentler^ more attractive 
manners in my life. When I told him the idea I had pre- 
viously formed, what I had thought about him, he was ex- 
tremely amused, laughed a great deal, and said, ' Don't you 
find that I am like every body else ?' " 

But Mr. Rogers thought him better than every body else, 
for he says : — 

" From all I had observed, I left him under the impression 

* Medwin, vol. ii. p. 138. 



Of Lord Byron. 473 

that he possessed an excellent heart, which had been coynplete- 
ly misunderstood, perhaps on account of his mobility and ap- 
parent likeness of manner. Indeed he took a capricious 
pleasure in bringing out this contrast between himself and 
others." 

On quitting Pisa he went to Genoa, and there produced the 
same impression on all who saw him until he left for Gi*eece. 

At this last stage of his life, the testimonies as to his ami- 
able, genial nature are so nnanimous, from the time of his ar- 
rival to the day of his death, that we can not refrain from 
quoting the language used by some of those who saw him 
then. 

" When I was presented to him," writes Mr. D to Colo- 
nel Stanhope, " I was particularly struck with his extremely 
graceful and affable manners, so opposite to what I had ex- 
pected from the reputation given him, and which painted him 
as 'morose, gloomy, almost cynicaV* 

" I took leave of him," writes Mr. Finlay, who was present- 
ed to Lord Byron at Cephalonia, " quite enchanted, charmed 
to find a great man so agi'eeable."f 

Colonel Stanhope, afterward Lord Harrington, who had 
been sent to Greece by the committee, and who only knew 
Lord Byron a few months before liis death, notwithstanding 
great discrepancies of idea and character, says frankly, that 
with regard to social relatiotis, no one could ever have been so 
agreeable; that there was no pedantry or affectation about 
him, but, on the contrary, that he was like a child for simplici- 
ty and joyousness. 

" Li the evening all the English, who had not, like Colo- 
nel Stanhope, turned Odyssean, assembled at liis house, and 
till late at night enjoyed the cliarm of his conversation. 
His character so much differed from what I had been induced 
to imagine from the relations of travellers, ihiii either their 
reports must have been inaccurate, or his character must 
have totally changed after his departure from Genoa. It 
would be difficult, indeed impossible, to convey an idea of 
the pleasure his conversation afforded. Among his Avorks 
that which may perhaps be more particularly regarded as 
exhibiting the mirror of his conversation, and the spirit which 

* Appendix to Parry's work. f Ibid. p. 210. 



47-i The Misanthropy and Sociability 

animated it, is ' Don Juan.' The following lines from Shak- 
speare seem as if iDvophetically written for him : — 

" ' Biron they call him ; but a merrier man, 
Withhi the limits of becoming mirth, 
I never spent an hour's talk withal : 
His eye begets occasion for his wit ; 
For every object that the one doth catch, 
Tlie other turns to a mirth-moving jest ; 
While his fair tongue (conceit's expositor) 
Delivers in such apt and gracious words, 
That aged ears play truant at his tales, 
And 3'ounger, hearing, arc quite ravished ; 
So sweet and voluble is his discourse.'" 

Millingen says : — 

" His wonderful mnemonic faculties, the rich and varied 
store with whicli lie had furnished his mind, his lively, bril- 
liant, and ever-busy imagination, his deep acquaintance with 
the w'orld, owing to his sagacious penetration, and the ad- 
vantageous position in which, through his birth and other 
circumstances, he had been placed, conjoined to the highly 
mercurial powers of his wnt, rendered his conversation pecul- 
iarly interesting ; enhanced, too, as it was by the charm of 
his fascinating manners. Far from being the surly, taciturn 
misanthrope generally imagined, I always found him dwell- 
ing on the lightest and merriest subjects ; carefully shunning 
discussions and wdiatever might give rise to unpleasing re- 
flections. Almost every w^ord with him was a jest ; and he 
possessed the talent of passing from subject to subject with 
a lightness, an ease, and a grace, that could with difficulty 
be matched. Communicative to a degree that astonished 
US, and might not unfrequently be termed indiscretion, he 
related anecdotes of himself and his friends Avhich he might 
as well have kept secret." 

Several persons, influenced by the stories circulated against 
Lord Byron, asked Dr. Kennedy whether his manners and 
exterior did not give the idea of a demon incarnate. " Quite 
the contrary," replied Kennedy, " his appearance and man- 
ners give the idea of a man xoith an excellent hearty both benev- 
olent and feeling, and he has an amiable, sympathetic physiog- 
nomy. The impression he made on me was that of a man 
of refined politeness and great aflability, united to much gay- 
ety, vivacity, and benevolence. His cordial aflability even 



Of Loud Byron. 475 

went so far that one was often obliged to recall his rank and 
fame, in order not to be involuntarily led away by his man- 
ner into too great familiarity with him."* 

A short time after Lord Byron's death, one of the first 
English reviews published an article on him entitled " Per- 
sonal Character of Lord Byron." It was written by a per- 
sonage who had had several occasions, during Lord Byron's 
last sojourn in Greece, of observing his habits, feelings and 
opinions. Though often jealous of Lord Byron's influence 
in the country, nevertheless when he could get rid of these 
bad feelings, he expressed himself with tolerable justice : — 

" Lord Byron's demeanor," says he, " was perhaps the most 
affable and courteous I ever met with." 

When he was in a good humor, and desirous to be on fair 
terms with any one, there Avas a great charm, an irresistible 
fascination in his manner. Though very gentle, it was al- 
ways gay, Avi'th an air of great frankness and generosity, 
qualities most real in him. "Lord Byron," he adds, "was 
known for a sort of poetic misanthrope ; but that existed 
much more in public imagination than in reality. He liked 
society, and was exti'emely kind and amiable, when calm. 
Listead of being gloomy, he was, on the contrary, of a very 
gay disposition, and was fond of jesting ; it even amused him 
to witness comic scenes, such as quarrels between vulgar buf- 
foons, to make them drink, or lead them on in any other way 
to show their drolleries. Li his writings, certainly, he loved 
to paint a character more or less the work of his imagination, 
and which therefore was assigned to himself by public opin- 
ion : that is, a proud, haughty being, despising all men, and 
disgusted with the human species. His liking for bandits 
and pirates may have sprung from some tendencies of his 
nature, some circumstances in his life ; hut there loas not the 
smallest resemhlanee between the poet and the corsair. Lord 
Byron's heart was full of kindness and generosity^, he took 
pride in splendid acts of beneficence : to change the position 
of some among his fellow-men, and make them exchange 
misery for unexpected good fortune, was for him the dearest 
exercise of his faculties. No one ever sympathized more 
deeply with the joys he could create." 

* See Kenned V. 



476 The Misanthropy and Sociability 

The same biographer remarks that one great error of Lord 
Byron's youth was to count upon gratitude and devotedness 
proportionate to his own, and that most of his accusations 
against human nature originated with this mistake. And 
then he adds : — 

" But his sentiments, in accordance with his nature, far 
from obeying tlie false direction his prejudices and erroneous 
opinions would have given, always made him, on the contrary, 
love his fellow-men with a Avarmth that quite excluded mis- 
anthrojiy. Still this natural ardor rendered him extremely 
sensitive to neglect from those he loved, especially in early 
youth, when he was led by the fault of an individual to 
generalize blame against mankind. lie relates somewhere, 
with merited contempt, that one of his friends Avould accom- 
pany a female relative to her milliner, instead of coming to 
take leave of him when he was about to leave England for a 
long time. The truth is that no one ever loved his iieighhor 
as much as Lord Byron. Sympathy, respect, affection, at- 
tention, Avere perpetual wants with him. He was really dis- 
gusted and sad when they failed him. But then he did not 
reason much, he only felt like a poet. It was his business to 
feed all these discontents, for the public likes nothing so 
much in poetry as disdain, contempt, derision, indignation, 
and particularly a kind of proud mockery, which forms the 
line of transition from or distinguishes a disordered state of 
imagination from madness. Consequently, seeing that this 
sort of tone pleased the public, when he began to write again 
he encouraged that style, his first care being to collect, like 
Jupiter, the darkest clouds." 

The same biographer also tries to insinuate that the ro- 
mantic interest excited by a handsome young man, full of 
melancholy and mystery, may have influenced Lord Byron's 
choice of heroes in his early poems ; for, says he, it is not 
every one who can be weary of the most exquisite enjoyments 
of society, and to be thus sated a man must have been great- 
ly prized by beauty and wealth. These reflections and ex- 
planations are arbitrary, and not impartial. But even if Lord 
Byron, at twenty-one years of age, did borrow ideas and sen- 
timents not really his, by way of producing poetic efiiect, we 
must nevertheless acknowledge that, even in this order of 



Of Lord Byron. 477 

sentiments, part still were genuine and real. Like all young 
men, Lord Byron had entered the world armed with the no- 
tions preceptors deem it necessary to inculcate on their dis- 
ciples regarding generosity, disinterestedness, liberty, honor, 
l^atriotism, etc. When he saw that almost all he had thus 
been taught was mere illusion, a theme for declamation, and 
that people in the world very rarely act on such piinciples ; 
then, no doubt, with his exqiiisite sensibility, and elevated 
standard of ideal, he must have felt himself more disgusted 
than any one else, and must have believed he had a right to 
despise the human race. Especially would this have been 
the case after he had personally suffered from cruel satire, from 
the conduct of his relative and guardian. Lord Carlisle, from 
the lightness of a few women, and the lukewarmness of some 
few friends. But, while owing to this fault in education, 
many young men subjected to like trials become sensualists, 
and others, convinced of the falsities that have been incul- 
cated on them, conclude there is no better system of morality 
than to seek after place, power, and profit, and become volun- 
tary instruments in the hands of the world's oppressors. Lord 
Byron's soul revolted at it. Too noble by nature to stoop, 
and confiding also in his genius, he became a poet with a 
slight tinge of misanthropy in his mind, but that could never 
reach unto his heart, that never modified his amiability in 
society, and which at a later period, when experience of life 
made him reflect more on the nature of his own sentiments 
and the weakness of humanity, became transformed into a 
sweet philosophy, full of indulgence for every human defect. 
This generous disposition is to be found at the base of all 
his poems written in Italy. 

Another reproach brought against Lord Byron is that he 
did not paint the good side of human nature. People show- 
ed as much indignation at this as if he had betrayed some 
secret, or calumniated some innocent person. A wondrous 
susceptibility, assuredly, with regard to the imperfections of 
our common nature, as tardy as strange. One would think, 
in reading the reproaches addressed to Lord Byron, that 
those who made them had quite forgotten how, from all 
time and in all languages, since man commented on man, our 
poor human nature has not generally been treated with much 



478 The Misanthropy and Sociability 

respect. Putting to one side moralists, and still iiioi'e pes- 
sinjists, have not the Holy Scrij^jtures and all the Fathers of 
the Church, used the most mortifying language concerning 
the perversity and corrujDtion of our species ? As regards 
complaints and avowals humiliating for our nature, could 
there be any more eloquent than those of St. Aiigustine ? 
Did not Pascal almost wish man to understand that he is 
an incomprehensible monster ? Lord Byron Avould not have 
called man a rnonster; but shocked at his i^ride he would 
wilUngly have said with Pascal, " If he raises himself, I will 
lower him; if he abuses himself, I will raise him up." In 
his drama of " Cain," where Lucifer is conducting Cahi 
through space and worlds, " Whore is earth ?" asks Cain. 
" 'Tis now beyond thee, less in the universe than thou in 
it," answers Lucifer. Byron always wished to make man 
feel his littleness. It is true that, while saying the same 
thing, a notable difference exists between Lord Byron's 
thought and that of great Christian souls, who humble 
man in order to make him see that his sole hope is in su- 
pernatural power. Lord Byron follows the same road, but 
his starting-point and his goal are not the same. When 
Lord Byron humbles man, it proceeds from a soul-felt want 
of truth and justice. He souglit truth by a natural law of 
his mind, expressed it unflinchingly, and thus yielded a pleas- 
ure to his heart and understanding. But if the impulse that 
sometimes provoked his severe or contemptuous words was 
not the sublime one of Christian orthodoxy, that sees no 
remedy for human depravity save in God alone, it was still 
farther off from belonging to the school of the pessimists, 
of La Rochefoucault in particular, who, content with assert- 
ing evil, neither saw nor sought for a remedy an j'- where. 
Lord Byron never despaired of mankind. In early youth, 
csj^ecially, he thought, — not like a Utopist, or even a poet, 
but like a sensible, humane, generous man, who deems that 
many of the evils that afflict his species, morally and phys- 
ically, might be alleviated by better laws, under whose in- 
fluence more goodness, sincerity, and real virtue might be 
substituted for the hypocrisy and other vices that now de- 
prave our nature. Lord Byron saw in many vices and lit- 
tlenesses the work of man rather than of nature. It was man 



. Of Lord Byrois'. 479 

corrupted by society, rather than by nature, that he con- 
demned. 

If religious hopes did not furnish him with an escape from 
the cruel sentence, jDhilosophical hoj)es saved him from being 
overwhelmed by it. Was that an error ? — an illusion ? In 
any case, it was a noble one ; sufficient to raise up an insur- 
mountable barrier between him and La Rochefoucault. For 
a time, it is true, in his first youth, he also seemed to be un- 
der the prestige La Kochefoucault exercised over so many 
minds, throiagh his " Maxims." The elegant manner in which 
they w^ere written, the clever tone of observation they dis- 
jjlayed, boldly laying down the result in the shajje of axioms, 
was well calculated to lead a youthful mind astray, and make 
a relative appear an absolute truth. For a while. Lord By- 
ron also seemed to confound the self-love that merges into 
real hateful egotism, with that which constitutes the princi- 
ple of life, and which, under the influence of heart and intelli- 
gence, claims the high name of virtue. He seemed to doubt 
of many things, and to be uneasy at the best impulses of his 
heart. We may remember that he accused himself of selfish- 
ness, because he took pleasure in the exercise of amiable vir- 
tues. But then that was only the passing error of a youth- 
ful mind, filled with an ideal of excellence too high for real- 
ity, and therefore coming into rude contact with deceptions 
and sorrows. In those days, recalling the fine pictures of 
life and mankind that had been presented to him as realities, 
especially at his first onset, and perceiving how difierent 
things actually were, seeing men pursue their fellow-men, and 
ascribe vices to the good and virtues to the bad, not even 
finding in his friends the qualities that distinguished his own 
heart, indignant at seeing so many persons sought after for 
their attractions, despite the vices that defaced them, his 
soul revolted at the sight — saddened too — and he exclaimed, 
sorrowfully, in his memoranda : — " Yes, La JtochefoucauU is 
right:'' 

An illusion might find jjlace in Lord Byron's mind, but it 
could not last ; and if peoj^le will read Avith attention what 
he has written, they will soon understand the great difler- 
ence existing between him and the author of the "Maxims." 
Without even speaking of that which separates prose from 



480 The Misanthropy and Sociability 

poetry, an axiom from a hasty exi^ression, grave from gay, 
maxims from satire, the difference is still enormous. Lord 
Byron had not received from nature, any more than the au- 
thor of the " Maxims," the gift of seeing things in a roseate 
hue. On the contrary, from his habit of profound observation, 
he too often saw them enveloj^ed in sombre colors. But, on 
the other hand, he had received such a great gift of perspi- 
cacity and exactness that things false and fictitious could no 
more resist his glance than fog can resist the rays of the sun. 
La Rochefoucault is certainly an admirable jjainter, but he nev- 
er takes a likeness otherwise than by profile. Just as our sat- 
ellite turns round our planet, only shoAving us its volcanoes and 
calcined summits, and leaving us in ignorance of the other 
side ; just so did La Rochefoucault turn around human nature. 
It only showed him one side, — the most barren and most un- 
healthy, and that alone did he describe. Still, his description is 
made with such art and nicety, and has so much charm about 
it, that it appears correct at first sight, and, indeed, so it is 
relatively ; but, nevertheless, by dint of omission and gener- 
alization, it is false, since it Avould fain impose a part upon us 
for the Avhole. In his voyage of exploration through the 
windings of the human heart the author of the " Maxims " 
stops midway, and comes back over the same ground. It 
would appear as if his mind lacked strength to go through 
more than half the circle of truth. But Lord Byron, through 
the vigor and elasticity of his faculties, after having pene- 
trated into the dark regions Avhere only evil is perceived, 
and gone through the Avhole circle, raised himself up into 
that pure, serene atmosphere Avhere goodness and virtue in- 
habit, and he also could say, with Dante, coming out of the 
last infernal circle, — 

"Alfin tornammo a riveder le stelle." 

La Rochefoucault always rails against mankind, without 
ever finding out any good. Lord Byron, on the contrary, 
sees both good and evil. He points out the latter, often sad- 
ly, and sometimes with light jests ; but he is always happy 
to acknowledge serioiTsly the existence of good, and to pro- 
claim that, despite all hinderances, beautiful souls do exist, 
practicing all kinds of virtue ; thus proving that, however 



Of Lord BYROisr. 481 

rare, virtue to him is still a reality, and no illusion. If, in 
his burlesque, satirical poems, wishing especially to stigmatize 
vice in high quarters, he has painted wicked women and 
queens (Catherine and Elizabeth), did he not likewise refresh 
our souls with 'the enchanting portraits of Angiolina (the 
wife of Faliero), and of Josephine (the wife of Werner). If 
he made merry at the expense of coquettish, Aveak, hypocrit- 
ical women (like Adeline, for instance), has he not consoled 
us by painting, in far greater number, angels of loving de- 
votedness, like Myrrha, Adah, Medora, Haidee, and in gener- 
al all his delightful female crQ^ations ? Are not all his heroes 
even, more or less, constant, devoted, ready to sacrifice ev- 
ery thing to the sincerity of their feelings — devoted love, 
continued even in the heart of Cain toward his Adah ? In 
" Heaven and Earth " the angels gave up celestial happiness, 
and exposed themselves to every evil, in order not to aban- 
don those who loved them. Don Juan himself loved unself- 
ishly. Bitter remembrances, reflections arising from the 
conduct of friends, made him, it is true, doubt the existence 
of friendship, generalize, blame sometimes, and write those 
fine stanzas in the fourteenth canto of " Don Juan :" — 

" Without a friend, what were humanitj', 

To hunt our errors up with a good grace ? 
Consoling us with — ' Would you had thought twice ! 
Ah! if you had but follow 'd m^ advice I' 



*'0 Job! you had two friends: one's quite enough; 

Especially when we are ill at ease ; 
They're but bad pilots when the weather's rough, 

Doctors less famous for their cures than fees. 
Let no man grumble when his friends fall off. 

As they will do like leaves at the first breeze : 
When your affairs come round, one way or 'tother, 
Go to the coffee-house, and take another. 



"But this is not my maxim; had it been. 

Some heart-aches had been spared me : yet I care not— 
I would not be a tortoise in his screen 

Of stubborn shell, which waves and weather wear not ; 
'Tis better on the whole to have felt and seen 

That which humanity may bear, or bear not; 
'Twill teach discernment to the sensitive, 
And not to pour their ocean in a sieve. 

X 



482 The Misanthropy and Sociability 



"Of all the horrid, hideous notes of woe, 

Sadder than owl-songs or the midnight blast, 

Is that portentous phrase, ' I told you so,' 

Utter'd b}' friends, those prophets of the past, 

Who, 'stead of saying what you now should' do, 
Own they foresaw that you would fall at last, 

And solace your slight lapse 'gainst ' bonos mores,' 

With a long memorandum of old stories." 

On looking into his own heart, Lord Byron no longer doubt- 
ed the existence of sincere friendships, devoid of all ironical 
selfishness, since he wrote that .forty-ninth stanza, where he 
says that such is not his maxim, or his heart would have had 
less to suflfer. 

Did he not make love of country incarnate in that admi- 
rable type {the young Venetian Foscar€) ; too fine a type, per- 
haps, though historical, to be understood by every one. And 
did he not, through other types, equally prove his belief in 
all the noblest, most virtuous sentiments of our soul ? In fine, 
if he recognized littleness in man, he recognized greatness like- 
wise. All his writings, as well as his conduct through life, 
belied continuously and broadly a few poetical expressions 
and mystifications which drew down upon him, in common 
with other calumnies,- that of having unjustly accused hu- 
manity. As to the misanthropy of his early youth, it was of 
so slight a nature that it only passed through his mind, and 
occasionally rested on his pen ; but it always evaporated in 
words, and especially in his verses. For his life and actions 
ever showed that such a sentiment Avas foreign to his nature. 
•And since its attacks* always took place under the press- 
ure of some great injustice, some excess of suffering imposed 
by the strong on the weak and inoflfensive, we must also add 
that there was in this pretended misanthropy more real 
goodness and humanity than in all the elegies, songs, medita- 
tions, Messenian odes, etc., of all those who blamed him. 

Having studied Lord Byron at all periods of his life, in his 
relations with society, and in his love of solitude, we have 
seen him alternately placed in contact with others, and then 
more directly with himself; now correcting the inconven- 
iences that flow from solitude, by seeking the amusements of 

■^ See chapter on " Melancholy." 



Of Lord Byron. 483 

youth and society, and then making solitary meditation fol- 
low on the useful field of observation sought in the world, 
and thus he drew profit from both, without ever sufiering 
himself to be exclusively engrossed by one or the other. 
The enervating atmosphere of drawing-rooms remained in- 
nocuous for him ; he came out fx'om them with a mind as virile 
and independent as if he had never breathed it, keeping all 
his ideas strong and bold, just and humane, as they were be- 
fore. But the consequences of this rare equilibrium, which 
he was enabled to maintain between a worldly and a solitary 
life, were very great, as regarded his fame, if not his happi- 
ness ; for he gained thereby an experience and a knowledge 
of the human heart quite wonderful, at an age when the first 
pages of the Book of Life have in general scarcely been read, 
so that, in perusing his writings, one might imagine that he 
had already gone through a long career. Lastly, as after- 
ward not the least trace of this pretended misanthropy re- 
mained, he might have repeated what Bernardin de Saint 
Pierre said of a certain melancholy that we are scarcely ever 
free from in youth, and which was compared, in his presence, 
to the small-pox : — " I also have had that malady, but it left 
no traces behind it." 



484 Lord Byron's Pride. 



» CHAPTER XX. 

LORD BYROn's pride. 

Among Lord Byron's biographers, we remark some who 
doubtless believed it useless to count on success, if their work 
did not contain a large tribute to human wickedness, and 
who, seeing it nevertheless impossible to accuse Lord Byron 
of any vice emanating from heart or soul, gave themselves 
the pleasure of imagining a host of defects. Besides the 
faults produced by impetuosity and irritability of temper, — 
those we have just explained, — they dwell on I know not 
what exaggerated esteem of himself, and immoderate desire 
of esteem from others, so as to insinuate that Lord Byron 
was a prey to pride, ambition, aiid even vanity. 

Though all we have remarked in a general way, with "re- 
gard to his modesty, might be considered a sufficient re- 
sponse to these accusations, we are willing to take up the 
theme again and examine more particulai'ly all these forms 
of self-love. 

To assert that Lord Byron was not at all proud, might 
cause surprise, so much has been said of his pride confound- 
ing the man with the poet, and the poet with the heroes of 
his creation. But assxiredly those who would feel surprise 
could not have known him or studied his character. 

Pride is easily recognized by a thousand traits. It is one 
of those serious maladies of soul, whose external symptoms 
can no more be hidden from moral psychologists than the 
symptoms of serious physical infirmities can be hidden from 
physiologists. Now, what says the moralist of the proud 
man ? That he never listens to tl^e counsels of friendship ; 
that every reproach irritates him ; that a proud man can not 
be grateful, because the burden is too great for him ; that he 
never forgives, makes excuses, or acknowledges his faults, or 



LoKD Byron's Pride. 485 

that he is to blame ; that he is extremely reserved and pi'oud 
in the habits of social life ; that he is envious of the goods 
enjoyed by others, deeming them so much subtracted from 
his own merits ; that hatred toward his rivals fills his heart ; 
finally, that, satisfied with himself almost to idolatry, he is 
incapable of any moral improvement. 

Now, let it be said in all sincerity, what analogy can there 
be between the proud man and Lord Byron ? By his words, 
his actions, and the testimony of all those who approached 
him, was not Lord Byron the reverse of all this ? Was it 
he who would have refused the counsels of friendship ? turn- 
ed aside from admonition ? been indignant at blame ? Let 
those who think so, only read the accounts of his childhood, 
his youth, his life of afiection, and they will see whether he 
was not rather the slave of his loving heart ; if he did not al- 
ways give doubly what he had received. 

Without even speaking of his childhood, when he was 
really so charming, of his doci-lity toward his nui'ses and pre- 
ceptors, toward good Dr. Glennie at Dulwich, and afterward 
at Harrow, toward the excellent Dr. Drury ; let us consider 
him at that solemn moment for a boy of eighteen, when he 
Avas about to publish his poetic compositions. Did he not 
burn the whole edition, because a friend whom he respected, 
disapproved some parts ?* See him again accepting the 
blame of another friend about " Childe Harold," and when, 
before publishing it, yielding to the advice of Dallas and 
Gifford, he suppressed the stanzas that most pleased him. 
See him also ceasing to write " Don Juan," because the per- 
son he loved had expressed disai^probation of it, not even 
substantiated by reasons. 

Was it Lord Byron who would have been incapable of for- 
giving ? Why, the pardon of injuries was, on the contrary, a 
habit with him, a necessity, his sole vengeance, even when 
such conduct might appear almost superhuman. It was thus, 
that when cruelly wounded in his self-love, even more than 
in his heart, by Lady Byron's behavior, he wrote that touch- 
ing "Farewell," which might have disai'med the fiercest re- 
sentment : and that afterward, yielding to Madame de Stael's 
entreaties, he consented to propose a reconciliation, which 

* See what Moore saj'S of this trait in Lord Byron. 



486 Lord Byron's Pride. 

was refused : and not even that aggravation prevented him 
from often speaking well of Lady Byron. 

Gratitude, that proves such an insupportable load to the 
proud man, did it not rather seem a happiness to him ? 

When he had done some wrong, far from refusing to make 
excuses, was he not the first to think of it, saying that he could 
not go to rest, with resentment in his heart ? While a mere 
hoy, and when he had been wounded in his most enthusiastic 
feelings by a fortunate rival, Mr. Musters, was not Byron the 
first to hold out his hand and express regret for the bitterness 
of a few words ? 

Far from hiding his faults, and not satisfied with avowing 
them, did he not magnify them, exaggerate them to siach a 
degree that this generoias impulse became a real fault in him ? 

Far from having been too proud and reserved in his habits 
of life, have we not seen him reproached with being too fa- 
miliar ? 

Did envy or rivalry ever enter into his soul ? 

And lastly, far from conceiving too much self-satisfaction, 
far from rendering his own mind the homage characteristic 
of pride, did not Lord Byron, looking at himself through the 
weaknesses of other men, constantly depreciate himself? 

All the ways in which genius is wont to manifest itself 
were assuredly alike familiar to him ; neither philosophy nor 
art had any secrets for him. But he only made use of them 
to produce continual acts of humility instead of pride ; say- 
ing, that if philosophy were blind, art was no less incapable of 
fulfilling the aspirations of mind, and realizing the ideal be- 
held in imagination. * 

His very skepticism, or rather what has been called by this 
name, afibrds another great proof of his modesty. " Skepti- 
cism," says Bacon, "is the great antagonist of pi'ide." 

But, the most striking proof of all, undoubtedly, consists 
in the improvement of his moral being that was perpetually 
going on ; for, to carry it out, he must have dived into the 
depths of his secret soul, sternly and conscientiously, undeter- 
red by the great obstacle^ to all self-amelioration, namely — 
pi'ide. 

So many facts, in support of the same assertions, are to be 
found spread through the different chapters of this work, 



Lord Byron's Pride. " 487 

that we forbear to lengthen the present view of Lord Byron's 
character by adducing any more. Let us sum up by say- 
ing, that not only was Lord Byron devoid of pride, but that 
it would be difficult to find in any man more striking exam- 
ples of the opposite virtues ; unless, indeed, we sought them 
in souls com^oletely swayed by the sublimest teachings of 
Christianity. 

And yet it is easy to understand how he might be ac- 
cused of pi'ide. His contempt for oiainion, augmenting as 
he further appreciated its little worth ; a cei'tain natural 
timidity, of which Moore, Gait, and Pigott have all spoken, 
though without drawing thence the logical inferences; his 
eagerness to put down the unfounded ridiculous pretensions 
of human nature; his own dignity under misfortune ; his 
magnanimity and passion for independence ; all these quali- 
ties might easily betray those superficial minds into error, 
who do not study their subjects sufficiently to discover the 
truth. 



488 The Vanity of Lord Byron. 



CHAPTER XXL 

THE VANITY OF LOKD BYRON. 

But it is incomprehensible that any one should have been 
found to accuse Lord Byron of vanity. For is not the vain 
man one who lies in order to appear better and more highly 
gifted than he really is ; who knows full well that the good 
opinion he so ardently seeks is not what he deserves ; who 
endeavors by every means to attract the attention of others ; 
who flatters in order to be flattered ; whose willingness to 
oblige, whose care and kindness, all flow from interested mo- 
tives ; whose whole character savors of ostentation and show ; 
and who despises humble friends, in order to run after bril- 
liant society and wear borrowed pluriies? All these signs 
indicate vanity. Can a single one be found in Byron's char- 
acter ? 

Surely our readers will not have forgotten that, for fear 
of making himself out better, he always wished to appear 
worse than he was; that he exaggerated the weaknesses 
common to most of us, and which every bo«ly else hides, 
magnifying them into serious faults ; that he never flattered 
others, nor wished to be flattered himself; that he concealed 
the services he rendered, the good he did ; and kept aloof 
from those in power so as to give himself more to true friend- 
ship. 

We know besides that his love of merithtg, rather than 
obtaining^ admiration, went so far as to make undeserved 
praise quite offensive to him. If eulogiums did not seem to 
him duly bestowed, his soul, athirst for justice and truth, re- 
pelled them indignantlv- Blame, or harsh criticism, annoyed 
him far less • than unmerited praise or suffi'ages obtained 
through favor or intrigue. At the moment he was about to 
publish his first poem, " Childe Harold," which might natural- 
ly be expected to prove the making of his literary reputa- 



The Vanity of Lord Byron. 4S9 

tion, Dallas having given him some advice with a view to 
gaining popularity, Lord Byro;i answered : — 

" My woi'k must make its way as well as it can ; I know 
I have every thing against me, angry poets and prejudices ; 
but if the poem is a poem., it will surmount these obstacles, 
and if not., it deserves its fate." 

And then, when he discovered that his publisher had been 
taking steps to obtain the approbation of Gilford, the great 
critic, he wrote indignantly to Dallas, calling this proceeding 
of Murray's a paltry transaction. 

" The more I think, the more it vexes me," said he. " It 
is bad enough to be a scribbler, without having recourse to 
such shifts to extoi't praise or deprecate censure, .... and 
all without my wish, and contrary to my express desire * 

" I am angry with Murray : it was a bookselling, back- 
shop, jDaltry proceeding. ... I have written to him as he 
never was written to before by an author, I'll be sworn." 

Why, then, accuse a man of vanity when he never com- 
plained of criticism and never solicited praise ? ' Was it on 
account of some of his tastes, particularly the importance he 
attached to his superiority in boyish games, in bodily exer- 
cises, on those which showed dexterity in swimming, fencing, 
shooting ? But all these tastes were as manly as they were 
innocent. The really trifling tastes common to the youth of. 
his rank and country Lord Byron did not share. 

It has also been said that he attached far too much im- 
portance to his noble birth. Much., perhaps ; too much., by 
no means. His ancestoi's were all illustrious. They were 
illustrious for their military exploits, and were already no- 
bles in France when they shared the dangers and successes 
of William the Conqueror ; they had followed their kings 
to Palestine ; seven brothers bearing the name of Byron had 
fought on the same battle-field, and four fell there in defense 
of their true sovereign and their new country. By his moth- 
er he was descended from the kings of Scotland. " Noth- 
ing is nobler," says a moralist of our day, " than to add lus- 
tre to a great name by our own deeds." 

Many of his early compositions testify to the desire he 
felt of increasing the fame that belonged to his family. For 

♦ * Letter 68, to Dallas, 17th September, 1811. 

X 2 



4:90 The Vanity of Lord Byron. 

instance, in the poem written at foui'teen, and which is enti- 
tled "Verses composed on leaving Newstead Abbey," after 
having sung the valor of his ancestors displayed on the plains 
of Palestine, in the valley of Crecy, and at Marston, where 
four brothers moistened the field with their blood, he ex- 
claims : — 

"Shades of heroes, farewell! your descendant, departing 

From the seat of his ancestors, bids you adieu! 

Abroad, or at home, your remembrance imparting 

New courage, he'll think upon glory and you. 

****** 

Far distant he goes, with the same emulation, 
The fame of his fathers he ne'er can forget. 

"That fame and that memory still will he cheri>h ; 

He vows that he ne'er will disgrace j'our renown : 
. Liiie you will he live, or like j'ou will he perish." 1803. 

The same sentiments appear in other poems, and particu- 
larly in the " Elegy on Newstead," written at sixteen. His 
wish of adding fresh lustre to the family name was all the 
stronger because the last lord, his great uncle, had somewhat 
blemished it by his eccentric conduct. 

But there is a vast difference between this just feeling of 
pride and the vanity that leads to exultation in mere titles 
of nobility, which often owe their origin to the favor of 
princes. Besides, although Lord Byron was aristocratic by 
birth, and in his every instinct and taste, he was neverthe- 
less truly liberal on principle and through virtue, in politics 
as well as in private life ; for he always admitted into his 
affections those who possessed fitting qualities of head and 
soul, without any consideration of their birth. 

After having studied Lord Byron's character under the 
headings of pride and vanity, we must now examine him 
with regard to ambition : a third form of self-love, wliich, 
though separated from the other two by scarcely perceptible 
shades, and even being often confounded with them, so as to 
appear one and the same feeling, does not, however, less re- 
tain its permanent and distinguishing traits. 

Was Lord Byron ambitious ? 

"Ambitious men ml^st be divided into three classes," says 
Bacon ; " some seek only to raise themselves, forming a com- 
mon and despicable species ; others, with like intent, maRe 



The Vanity of Lord Byron. 491 

the elevation of country enter into the means they employ ; 
this is a nobler ambition, one more refined, and perhaps more 
violent; lastly, others embrace the happiness and glory of 

all men in the immensity of their projects Ambition 

is, then, sometimes a vice, and sometimes a virtue." 

That Lord Byron's ambition did not range him among 
either of the two fii^t classes was abundantly proved by the 
actions of his whole life ; and as to his writings, letters, or 
poetic works, we should vainly seek a single word in them 
that could be attributed to any low ambition. 

An ambitious man has generally been an ambitious child. 
Now, according to unanimous and competent testimony. 
Lord Byron was not an ambitious child. The usual emula- 
tion founded on ambition had no eifect on his progress. All 
his advancement proceeded from heart and imagination. It 
was his heart, as we have seen, that made him take his pen 
in hand, that dictated his first verses ; and he was likewise 
actuated by the need and the pleasure of trying and exercis- 
ing the strength of his intellectual faculties, of keeping up 
the sacred fire that warmed his breast, and appeasing his 
ardent thirst after truth. We have given too many proofs 
of all this to requii'e to insist upon it any further. 

We have also seen that it was disagreeable to him to be 
admired and praised without having merited it. He felt the 
same repugnance to seeking for popularity. When " Childe 
Harold " appeared, Dallas advised him to alter some pas- 
sages, becaiise, he said, certain metaphysical ideas expressed 
in the poem might do him harm in public opinion, and that, 
at twenty-three years of age, it was well to court in an hon- 
orable way the sufii'ages of his countrymen, and to abstain 
from wounding their feelings, oj)inions, and even their prej- 
udices.* Lord Byron replied : — 

" I feel that you are right, but I also feel that I am sincere, 
and that if I am only to write ad captanduin vulgus, I might 
as well edit a magazine at once, or concoct songs for Vaux- 

hall."t 

And yet when he wrote thus to Dallas he had not arrived 
at any popularity. 

Soon, however, it came to him unsought; but he did not 

* Dallas, Lett r 45. f Lord Byron to Dallas, Letter 66 ; Moore, vol. ii. 



492 The Vanity of Lord Byron. 

appreciate it nor flatter it to stay, as an ambitious man would 
not have failed to do. On the contrary, his noble independ- 
ence of character and incapacity for flattering the multitude 
gained strength every day. Proofs of the same abound at 
every period of his life. 

"If I valued fame," he said in his memoranda, 1813, "I 
should flatter received opinions, which ha^e gathered strength 
by time, and which will last longer than any living works 
that are opposed to them. But, for the soul of me, I can not 
and will not give the lie to my own thoughts and doubts, 
come what may. If I am a fool, I am, at least, a doubting 
one ; and I envy no one the certainty of his self-approved 
wisdom." 

And then, at the same time, he wrote : — 

" If I had any views in this country they would probably 
be parliamentary. But I have no ambition ; at least, if any, 
it would be ' cmt Ccesar aut nihiV My hopes are limited to 
the arrangement of ray afiairs, and settling either in Italy or 
in the East (rather the last), and drinking deep of the lan- 
guage and literature of both." 

The catastrophe that overtook Najsoleon, his hero, and the 
success of fools, quite overcame him at this time : — 

" Past events have unnerved me, and all I can now do is 
to make life an amusement and look on while others play. 
After all, even the highest game of crosses and sceptres, what 
is it ? Vide Napoleon's last twelvemonth," etc., etc. 

The folloAving year (1814), when political feeling ran so 
high against him as to threaten his popularity on account of 
the lines addressed to the Princess Charlotte, which had of- 
fended the regent, who had just gone over from the Whigs 
to the Tories, Byron wrote to Rogers : — 

"All the sayings and doings in the world shall not make 
me utter one word of conciliation to any thing that breathes. 
I shall bear what I can, and what I can not I shall resist. 
The worst they could do would be to exclude me from society. 
I have never courted it, nor, I may add, in the general sense 
of the word, enjoyed it — and ' there is a world elsewhere.' " 

"When once he had quitted England his indifierence to pop- 
ularity and its results further inci'eased. He wrote from Ven- 
ice to Murray: — 



The Vanity of Lord Byron. 493 

" I never see a newspaper, and know nothing of England, 
except in a letter now and then from my sister" (1816). 

But that did not at all suit his publisher, who set about 
sending him reviews, criticisms, and keeping him up to all 
that was going on in the literary and political world, thinking 
thus to stimulate and keep alive the passions that kindle 
genius. Then it was that Lord Byron, considering this in- 
tellectual regime unwholesome for mind and heart, signified 
to Murray that their correspondence could not continue un- 
less he consented to six indispensable conditions. We regret 
not being able to give the whole of this beautiful letter, cir- 
cumscribed as we are by certain necessary limits. Thus we 
shall only quote what more particularly relates to our sub- 
ject :* — 

" I have been thinking over our late correspondence, and 
wish to jii'opose to you the following articles for our future : — 

" 1st. That you shall write to me of yourself, of the health, 
wealth, and welfare of all friends ; but of me {quoa^ me) little 
or nothing. 

"2dly 

"3dly 

" 4thly. That you send me no periodical works whatso- 
ever, no ' Edinburgh,' ' Quarterly,' ' Monthly,' or any review, 
magazine, or newspaper, English or foreign, of any descrip- 
tion. 

" 5thly. That you send me no opinion whatsoever, either 
goocl^ had, or indifferent, of yourself, or your friends, or others, 
concerning any work of mine, past, present, or to come. 

" 6thly If any thing occurs so violently gross or 

personal as requires notice, Mr. Kinnaird will let me know ; 
but of praise I desire to hear nothing. 

" You will say, ' To what tends all this ?' I will answer 
— to keep my mind free, and unbiased by all paltry and per- 
sonal irritabilities of praise or censure ; to let my genius take 
its natural direction. All these reviews, with their praise or 
their criticism, have bored me to death, and taken off my at- 
tention from greater objects." 

Byron wished, he said, to jjlace himself in the position of a 
dead man, knowing nothing and feeling nothing of what is 

* See Moore, Letter 456. 



494 The Vanity of Lord Byron. 

done and said about him.* At the same time he gave the 
greatest proof of the reality of the sentiments expressed in 
this letter by continuing to stay at Ravenna, where people 
were ignorant of his language, his genius, and his reputation, 
and where consequently he could only be remarked and ap- 
preciated for his external gifts and his deeds of benevolence. 
When he went from Ravenna to Pisa, Murray, who had not 
been discouraged by the six conditions, and who was really 
attached to Lord Byron more as a friend even than as a pub- 
lisher, became alarmed at the angry feeling stirred up by 
" Cain," the " Vision of Judgment," " Don Juan," etc., and 
feared seeing him lose his popularity. So he wrote begging 
him to compose something in his first style, which had excited 
such general enthusiasm. But Lord Byron answered : — 

"As to ' a poem in the old way,' I shall attempt of that kind 
nothing further. I follow the bias of my own mind, without 
considering whether women or men are or are not to be 
pleased.'* 

His whole conduct in Greece was one long act of abnega- 
tion, of disinterested and sublime self-devotion. Let people 
read Parry, Gamba, CA^en Stanhope.f He sacrificed for Greece 
all his revenue, his time, pleasures, comforts, even life itself, 
if necessary, and at the age of thirty-five ; and then, after 
success, he refused every honor, satisfied with having de- 
served them. 

" My intentions with regard to Greece," said he to Parry, 
at Missolonghi, " may be explained in a few words. I will 
remain here until Greece either throws ofi" the Turkish yoke, 
or again sinks beneath it. All ray revenue shall be spent in 
her service. All that can be done with my resources, and 
personally,'! will do with my whole heart. But as soon as 
Greece is delivered from her external enemies, I will leave 
without taking any part in the interior organization of the 
government. I Avill go to the L^nited States of America, 
and there, if requisite and they like it, be the agent for 
Greece, and endeavor to get that free and enlightened gov- 
ernment to recognize the Greek federation as an independent 
State. England would follow her example, and then the 

* See Moore, Letter 45G (Ravenna, 2-4tli September, 1821). 
t See his " Life in Italy." 



The Vanity of Lord Byron. 495 

destiny of Greece would be assured. She would take the 
place that belongs to her as a member of Christendom in 
Europe." 

One day, at Missolonglii, a Prussian officer came to com- 
plain to Lord Byron, saying, that his rank would not allow 
him to remain under command of Mr. Parry, who was his in- 
ferior both in a civil and military capacity, and consequently 
that he was going to retire. After having done all he could 
to bring the German to more reasonable sentiments, after 
having even joked him on his quarterings of nobility, and the 
folly of wishing to introduce such prejudices into a country 
like Greece, Lord Byron did not scruple adding : — 

"As to me, I should be quite willing to serve as a simj)le 
soldier, in any corps, if that were considered useful to the 
cause." • 

But if Lord Byron's absence of ambition under the two 
first categories, as established by Bacon, is well proved ; the 
same can not be said with regard to the third. To deny it 
would be not only contrary to truth, but especially would it 
be contrary to all justice; for the third order of ambition 
ceases to be a fault ; it is the love of glory, and, according to 
Bacon, that is a virtue. At least it is a quality pertaining 
to noble minds ; and could it, then, be wanting in Lord By- 
ron ? He had always had a presentiment that glory would 
not fail him. But he was not satisfied with obtaining it, his 
special wish was to deserve it with just and undeniable right. 
While yet a child in his fourteenth year, he wrote, in 

A Fragment. 

"When to their airj' hall my fathers' voice 
Shall call my spirit 

^ « ^ic 4c * * 

Oh! may my shade behold no sculptured urns 
To mark the spot where earth to earth returns ! 
No lengthen'd scroll, no praise-encumber'd stone ; 
My epitaph shall be my name alone : 
If that with honor fail to crown my clay, 
Oh! may no other fame mj' deeds repay! 
That^ onlj' that, shall single out the spot ; 
By that remember'd, or with that forgot." 

Another time, replying in verse to a poetic composition 
of one of his comrades which spoke of the common lot of 



■i96 The Vanity of Lord Byron. 

mortals as lying in Lethe's icave, Lord Byron, after some 
charming coui^lets, ends thus : — 

"What, though the sculpture be destroy 'd, 
From dark oblivion meant to guard ; 
A bright renown shall be enjoy'd 

By those whose virtues claim reward. 

"Then do not say the common lot 

Of all lies deep in Lethe's wave ; 
Some few, who ne'er will be forgot, 

Shall burst the bondage of the grave." 

Several other compositions belonging to the same period 
prove that this child, who was so unambitious, and devoid of 
the usual sort of emulation, did, however, desire to excel in 
great and virtuous things. Li his adie.u to the seat of his an- 
cestors, he says, that, — • 

"Far distant he goes, with the same emulatibn, 
The fame of his fathers he ne'er can forget. 
That fame, and that memory still will he cherish ; 

He vows that he ne'er \\ ill disgrace your renown ; 
Like you will he live, or like yo\i will he perish." 

And when the Rev. Mr. Beecher, his friend and guide dur- 
ing the college vacation passed at Southwell, reproached him 
with not going enough into the world, young Byron answer- 
ed, that retirement suited him better, but that when his boy- 
hood and years of trial should be over, if the senate or the 
camp claimed his presence, he should endeavor to render 
himself worthy of his birth : — 

"Oh! thus, the desire in my bosom for fame 

Bids me live but to hope for posteritj''s praise; 

Could I soar with the phoenix on pinions of flame, 

With him I could wish to expire in the blaze." 

But the fame to which he aspired was not literary fame. 
Garlands weaved on Mount Parnassus had no perfume for 
him, and to seek after them Avould have appeared in his eyes 
a frivolous, unmeaning pastime. Tliis severe and unjust judg- 
ment, this sort of antipathy, could they have been a presenti- 
ment of the dangers with which the glory obtained by liter- 
ary fame threatened his repose ? However that may be, it 
is certain that he endured rather than sought after it ; and 
Ave may be equally sure that the glory to which his soul as- 



The Vanity of Lord Byron. 497 

laired was such as could be reaped in the senate, the camp, or 
amid the difficulties of an active, virtuous life. At sixteen 
he wrote : — 

' ' For the life of a Fox, of a Chatham the death, 

What censure, what 'danger, what woe would I brave ! 
Their lives did not end when they yielded their breath ; 

Their glory illumines the gloom of their grave." 1806. 

We find the following^ in his examination of conscience 
written when he was given up to fashionable London life, and 
in the heyday of his poetic fame: — 

" To be the first man — not the dictator, not the Sylla, but 
the Washington or the Aristides — the leader in talent and 
'truth — is next to the Divinity !" (1813.) 

These lines show that he did not feel himself in the posi- 
tion he could have wished to occupy, and that he would fain 
have achieved other success. 

But the destiny that was evidently contrary to his tastes, 
and which through a thousand circumstances carried him 
away both from a military and a parliamentary career, to 
keep him almost perforce in the high walks of literature, was 
this destiny in accordance at least with his nature? Lord 
Byron's brilliant, lebut in the senate, and his whole conduct 
in Greece when that country was one great military camp, 
prove certainly that he might have reaped full harvest in 
other fields, if fate had so allowed. But nevertheless when 
we see how j^rodigious were his achievements, concentrated 
within the domain of poetry ; when we see that, despite him- 
self, despite the resolution he occasionally took of writing no 
more, that yet, tortured by the energy of his genius, there 
was no remedy for him but to seize his pen ; that he wrote 
sometimes under the influence of fever ; that sleep did not 
still his imagination, nor travelling interrupt his works ; that 
sorrow did not damp his ardor, nor amusement and pleas- 
ure weaken his wondrous energy. When we think that he 
united to this formidable vigor of genius such a luxuriant 
poetic vein ; that his poems, unrivalled for depth of thought, 
conciseness, and magic beauty of style, were composed with 
all the ease of ordinary prose ; that he could write them 
while conversing, intern;pt his thread of ideas, and take it up 
again without difficulty, carry on his theme without previous 



498 The Vanity of Lord Byron. 

preparation, not stay his pen except to turn the leaf, not 
change a single word in whole jDages, generally only correct- 
ing when the proof-sheets came. When we know that a 
poem like the " Bride of Abydos" was written in four nights 
of a London season, the "CorsSir" in ten days, "Lara" in 
three weeks, his fourth Canto of " Childe Harold " in twenty 
days, the " Lament of Tasso " in the space of time requisite 
for going from Ferrara to Florence ; the " Prisoner of Chillon " 
by way of pastime during the day bad weather forced him 
to spend at a hotel on the borders of the Lake of Geneva ; 
when we know that he wrote the " Siege of Corinth " and 
" Parisina " amid the torments caused by his separation, and 
when besieged with creditors ; that at Ravenna, in the space 
of one year, while torn by many sorrows, and annoyed by 
conspiracies, though he generously aided the conspirators, he 
yet found leisui-e to write " Marino Faliero," the " Foscari," 
" Sardanapalus," " Cain," the " Vision of Judgment," and 
many other things ; that the fifth act of " Sardanapalus" was 
the work of forty-eight hours, and the fifth act of " Werner" 
of one night ; that during another year passed between Pisa 
and Genoa, in the midst of annoyances, sorrows, perpetual 
changes, "he wrote ten cantos of " Don Juan," his admirable 
mystery of " Heaven and Earth," his delightful poem of the 
" Island," the "Age of Bronze," etc. When we see all that, 
it must be acknowledged that if Lord Byron, in devoting 
himself to poetry, took a false step for his own happiness, it 
did not mar the manifestation of his genius. But if the 
world had cause to applaud, he did not share this sentiment. 
It might almost be said that he always wrote unwillingly; 
and certainly it may be added that fame never inspired him 
with vanity. That noble desire might, doubtless, have made 
his heart beat for a while, but it yielded to his philosophical 
spirit. If at twenty-six, being repelled from public business 
by the political bias of the day, and from a military career 
by other circumstances, he could write in his memoranda " I 
am not ambitious," how much more disposed did he feel to 
renounce every kind of ambition two years later, when he 
was leaving England, full of disgust, and having sounded all 
the depths of the human soul. 

" The wise man is cured of ambition by ambition itself," 



The Vanity of Lord Byron, 499 

says La Bruyere ; " he tends toward such great thmgs that lie 
can not confine hhnself to what are called treasures, high 
posts, fortune, and favor. He sees nothing in such poor ad- 
vantages good or solid enough to fill his hearty to deserve his 
cares and desires ; and it even requires strong efforts for him 
not to disdain thera too much. The only good capable of 
tempting him is that sort of fame which ought to be the 
meed of pure, simple virtue ; but men are not wont to give 
it, and he is fain to go without it." 

The only advantage Lord Byron wished to derive from his 
reputation was to render it subservient to his heart — the true 
focus of his noble existence. Even in the first days of youth, 
when his pulses beat strongly for glory, it is evident that he 
would make it tributary to heart — a means rather than an 
end. But this became more and more conspicuous when he 
had really attained to fame. In Italy especially he had be- 
come quite indifferent to the pompous praise accorded by 
reviews, while a single word emanating from the heart made 
an impression on him, ofttimes causing tears to start. He 
wrote to Moore from Ravenna, in 1821 : — 

" I have had a curious letter to-day from a girl in England 
(I never saw her), who says she is given over of a decline, 
but could not go out of the world withoi;t thanking me for 
the delight which my poesy for several years, etc., etc., etc. 
It is signed simply N. N. A., and has not a word of ' cant ' or 
preachment in it upon my opinions. She merely says that 
she is dying, and that, as I had contributed so highly to the 
pleasure of her existence, she thought that she might say so, 
begging me to hum her letter — which, by the way, I can not 
do, as I look upon such a letter in such circumstances as bet- 
ter than a diploma from Gottingen. 

" I once had a letter from Drontheim, in Norway (but not 
from a dying woman), in verse, on the same score of gratula- 
tion. These are the things which make one at times believe 
one's self a poet."* 

And in " Detached Thoughts," which he wrote at Raven- 
na, we find : — • 

" A young American, named Coolidge, called on me not 
many months ago. He was intelligent, very handsome, and 

* Letter 436, Moore. 



500 The Vanity of Lord Byron. 

not more than twenty years old, according to appearance ; a 
little romantic — but that sits well upon youth — and mighty 
fond of poesy, as may be suspected from his approaching me 
in my cavern. He brought me a message from an old serv- 
ant of my family (Joe Murray), and told me that he (Mr. 
Coolidge) had obtained a copy of my bust from Thorwaldsen 
at Rome, to send to America. I confess I was more flattered 
by this young enthusiasm of a solitary trans- Atlantic travel- 
ler, than if they had decreed me a statue in the Paris Pan- 
theon (I have seen emperors and demagogues cast down from 
their pedestals even in my own time, and Grattan's name 
razed from the street called after him in Dublin) ; I say that 
I was more flattered by it, because it was simple, un2JoUtical, 
and was xoithout tnotwe or ostentation, the pure and warm 
feeling of a boy for the poet he admired." 

The lines written on the road between Ravenna and Pisa, 
scarcely two years before his death, beginning with — 

" Oh, talk not to me of a name great in story," 

would alone suffice to prove that his love of fame had both 
its source and its sole gratification in his heart. These charm- 
ins verses end thus : — 



'Oh Fame! — if T e'er took delight in thy praises, 
'Twas less for tha cake of thy high-soumiini^ phrases, 
Than to see the brif:;ht eyes of the flear one discover 
She thought that I was not unworthy to love her. 



" There chieflj' I sought thee, there only I found thee : 
Her glance was the best of the rays that surround thee : 
When it sparkled o'er aught that was bright in my story, 
I knew it was love, and I felt it was glory." 

Some days before setting out for Genoa, while walking in 
the garden with Countess G , he went into a retrospect- 
ive view of his mode of life in England. She, on hearing how 
he passed his time in London, perceiving what an animated 
existence it was, so full of variety and occupation, showed 
some fears lest his stay in Italy, leading such a peaceful, re- 
tired, concentrated sort of life, away from the political arena 
presented by his own country, might entail too great a sacri- 



The Vanity of Lord Byron. 501 

fice offered on the altar of affection. " Oh no," said he, " I 
regret nothing belonging to that great world, where all is 
artiticial, whei*e one can not live to one's self, where one is 
obliged to be too much occupied with what others think, 
and too little with what we ought to think ourselves. What 
should I have done there ? Made some opposition speeches 
in the House of Lords, that would not have produced any 
good, since the prevailing policy is not mine. Been obliged 
to frequent, without pleasure or profit, society that suits me 
not. Have had more trouble in keeping and expressing my 
independent opinions. I should not have met you. . . . Ah, 
Avell ! I am much better pleased to know you. What is there 
in the world worth a true affection ? Nothing. And if I 
had to begin over again, I would still do what I have done." 
When Lord Byron thus unfolded the treasures concealed in 
his heart, his countenance spoke quite as much as his words. 
It was at this same period that he wi'ote in his di'ama of 
" Werner :" — 

"Glory's pillow is but restless, 
If love lay not down his cheek there." 

And now to sum up, let us say that, after having consider- 
ed Lord Byron not only in his actions, and their most appar- 
ent motives ; not only in the exercise of all his faculties, and 
in his sentiments sincerely expressed, but that, having like- 
wise confronted him with all the forms of self-love, it is im- 
possible for us to see aught else in him but that legitimate 
pride belonging to great souls, and the noble passion for 
glory — sentiments united in him with the peculiar feature 
of being under control of his affections. Thus, then, when 
the day came that he was called upon to sacrifice his aflee- 
tions, not only in the name of humanity, but also in the name 
of his love for glory, which was already a virtue, since he 
only desired and sought it to become a benefactor of man- 
kind ; then, by this new sacrifice, and \)j that even of life, his 
noble passion for glory attained to the height of a sublime 
virtue. 

Although our impartial examination of Lord Byron's 
faults end really in demonstrating their absence, let us be- 
ware nevertheless of raising him above humanity by assert- 
ing that he had none. La Bruyere thus sums up his portrait 



502 The Vanity of Lord Byron. 

of the great Conde : — "^ man loho was true, simple, and mag- 
nanimous, and in whom, only the smallest virtues were want- 
ing.'''' This fine sentence may partly apply to Lord Byron 
also. Only, to be just, we must substitute the singular for 
the plural. And instead of declaring that the lesser virtues 
were wanting in him, we must say one of the smaller virtues. 
In truth, he had not that prudence which proposes for our 
supreme end the preservation of our prosperity, fortune, popu- 
larity, tranquillity, health — in a word, of all our goods — and 
which constitutes Epicurean wisdom. But this virtue is 
really so mixed up with personality and egotism, that one 
may hesitate ere granting it the rank of a virtue ; and we 
ought not to be astonished if it were wanting in Lord Byron, 
for it can with difficulty be found united to great sensibility 
of heart and great generosity of character. Nevertheless, 
had he possessed it, his life might have been much happier. 
Had he possessed it, instead of devoting his revenue and all 
his literary gains to friends, disappointed authors, and unfor- 
tunates of all kinds, he would have kept them for himself; 
and thus he might have been able to brave almost all the 
storms of his sad year of married life, when his annoyances 
were greatly increased by the embarrassed state of his afiairs. 
Had he possessed this prudence, he would not in his boyish 
satire have attacked so many powerful persons, nor, at a later 
period, would he have made to himself idols of truth and 
justice. He Avould have spared the powers that be, and re- 
spected national prejudices, in order not to draw down on his 
own head so much rancor and calumny ; he Avould not have 
given a hold to slander, nor suffered himself to be insulted by 
being identified with the heroes of his poems ; he would not 
have compromised his fine health by an anchorite's regimen ; 
he would not have depreciated himself; he would have ex- 
tended to himself the indulgence with which he knew so well 
how to cloak the faults^ of others, ai;,d instead of confiding to 
indiscreet companions, as subjects for curiosity and study, 
adventures somewhat strange, and the usual routine of juve- 
nile follies, he would have profited by the system so ciirrent 
in our day of satisfying inclinations silently and covertly; 
lastly, and above all, he would not have married Miss Mil- 
bank. 



The Vanity of Loed Byron. 503 

All these reproaches are "yvell founded. But if we may 
say with reason that he wanted prudence for his own inter- 
ests, we ought at the same time to add that he never xoanted 
it for the interests of others. Did we not see him, even in ear- 
liest youth, burn ^vritings, or abstain from writing, through 
excess of delicacy and fear of wounding his neighbors ? 

" I have burned my novel and my comedy," said he in 1 813. 
"After all, I see that the pleasure of burning one's self is as 
great as that of printing. These two works ought not to 
have been published. I fell too much into realities; some 
persons would have been recognized, and others suspected.'''' 

When he sent Murray his stanzas to the Po, he forbade 
him to 25rint it, because it gave intimate details. 

His greatest fear a# Pisa and Genoa was lest the news- 
papers should have sj^oken of his feelings for the Countess 
G . 

But without seeking other examples, it suffices to glance 
at his conduct in Greece, where his prudence formed matter 
of astonishment to every body. Monsieur Tricoupi, the best 
historian of the war of Greek independence, has rendered 
him the most complete justice on this head. 

Let us then sum up by saying that, contrary to what is 
found in most, even virtuous men, Lord Byron possessed 
great and sublime virtues in the highest degree, and the 
lesser ones only in a secondary degree. As to his faults, it 
is evident they all sprang from his excellent qualities. En- 
dowed with all kinds of genius, except the one of calculating 
his personal interest, he failed in different ways to discharge 
his duty toward himself; and though he only harmed him- 
self by his Avant of prudence, yet was he cruelly punished 
for it by sorrows, regrets, and even by a fatally premature 
death. 



504 Lord Byron's Marriage 



CHAPTER XXn. 

LORD BYRON's marriage AND ITS CONSEQUENCES. 

Lord Byron's marriage exercised such a deplorable in- 
fluence over his destiny, that it is impossible to speak of it 
succinctly, and without entering into details ; for this one 
great misfortune proved the fruitful source of all others. 

If we were permitted to believe *iat Providence some- 
times abandons men here below to the influence of an evil 
genius, we might well conceive this baneful intervention in 
the case of Lord Byron's conjugal union, and all the circum- 
stances that led to it. 

It was but a few months after having returned from his 
travels in the East, that Lord Byron published his first can- 
tos of " Childe Harold," and obtained triumphs as an orator 
in the House of Lords. Presenting himself thus for the first 
time to the public, surrounded by all the prestige belonging 
to a handsome person, rank, and youth, — in a word, with 
such an assemblage of qualities as are seldom if ever found 
united in one person — he immediately became the idol of 
England. The enemies created by his I: oyish satire, and 
augmented by the jealousy his success could not fail to 
cause, now hid themselves like those vile iisects that slink 
back into their holes on the first appearance of the sun's 
rays, ready to creep out again when fogs and darkness re- 
turn. Living then in the midst of the great world, in the 
closest intimacy with many of the fair sex, and witnessing 
the small amount of wedded happiness enjoyed by aristo- 
cratic couples within his observation, intending also to wing 
his flight eventually toward climes more in unison with his 
tastes, he no longer felt that attraction for marriage which 
he had experienced in boyhood (like most youths), and he 
said, quite seriously, that if his cousin, George Byron, would 
marry, he, on his part, would willingly engage not to enter 



And its Consequences. 505 

into wedlock. But his friends saw with regret that his eyes 
were still seeking through English clouds the blue skies of 
the East; and that he was kept in perpetual agitation by 
the fair ones who would cast themselves athwart his path, 
throwing themselves at his head when not at his feet. Vain- 
ly did he distort himself, give himself out to the public as a 
true " Childe Harold," malign himself; his friends knew that 
his heart was overflowing with tenderness, and they could 
not thus be duped. If he had wished to cull some flowers 
idly, for the sake of scattering their leaves to the breeze, as 
youth so often does, this sort of amusement would have 
beeja difficult for him, for the fine ladies of his choice, if 
once they succeeded in inspiring him with some kind of ten- 
der feeling, fastened themselves upon him in such a passion- 
ate way tliat his freedom became greatly shackled, and they 
generally ended by making the public the confidante of their 
secret. 

Lord Byron had some adventures that brought him an- 
noyance and grief They made him fall into low spirits, — a 
sort of moral aj^athy and indifference for every thing. His 
best friends, and the wisest among them, thought that the 
surest way of settling him in England, and getting him out 
of the scrapes into which he was being dragged by female 
enthusiasm, would be for him to marry, and they advised 
him to it pertinaciously. Lord Byron, ever docile to the 
voice of affection, did not repel the counsels given, but he 
made them well understand that he should marry from rea- 
son rather than choice ; and the letter he wrote, when Moore 
insisted on his choosing a certain beautiful girl of noble 
birth,* well explains his whole state of mind at this time : — 

"I believe," said he, " that you think I have not been quite 
fair with that Alpha and Omega of beauty with whom you 

* " In none of the persons he admired," says Moore, " did I meet with a union 
of qualities so well fitted to succeed in the difficult task of winning him into fidel- 
itj' and happiness as in the lady in question. Combining beauty of the highest 
order with a mind intelligent and ingenuous, having just learning enough to give 
refinement to her taste, and far too much taste to make pretensions to learning; 
with a patrician spirit proud as Lord Byron's, but showing it only in a delicate 
generosity of spirit, a feminine high-mindedncss, which would have led her to 
tolerate the defects of her htisl)and in consideration of his noble qualities and his 
glory, and even to sacrifice silently her own happiness rather than violate tiie re- 
sponsibility in which she stood pledged to the world for liis." 

Y 



506 Lord Byron's Marriage 

would willingly have united me. Had Lady appeared 

to wish it, I would have gone on, and very possibly married 
with the same indifference which has frozen over the Black 
Sea of almost all my passions. It is that very indifference 
which makes me so uncertain and apparently capricious. It 
is not eagerness of new j^ursuits, but that nothing impresses 
me sufficiently to fix. I do not feel disgusted, but simply in-, 
different to almost all excitements ; and the proof of this is 
that obstacles, the slightest even, stop me. This can hardly 
be timidity, for I have done some imprudent things, too, in 
my time ; and in almost all cases opposition is a stimulus. 
In this circumstance it is not ; if a straw were in my way I 
could not stoop to pick it up. I have sent you this long 
tirade, because I would not have you suj^pose that I have 
been trifling designedly with you or others. If you think 
so, in the name of St. .Hubert (the patron of antlers and 
hunters) let me he married out of hand, I doiv't care to whom, 
so it amuses .any body else, and don't interfere with me much 
in the daytime." 

But that to which Lord Byron most aspired was always 
to wing his flight to brighter skies. 

"Your climate kills me," he wrote to Hodgson, directly 
after his return from the East. And then again, " My in- 
clinations and my health make me wish to leave England; 
neither my habits nor constitution are improved by your 
customs or your climate. I shall find employment in making 
myself a good Oriental scholar. I shall buy a mansion in 
one of the fairest islands, and describe, at intervals, the most 
interesting portions of the East." 

Lord Byron wrote this before he had attained great ce- 
lebrity, but this did not change either his sentiments or his 
tastes. Notwithstanding the embarrassments arising from 
the legacy left him by his great uncle, and which were prin- 
cipally caused by the action brought against him on account 
of the illegal sale of the Rochdale mines (a suit which Lord 
Byron gained, but the expenses of which were ruinous), he 
was neverljieless suflSciently rich to live at ease, to let liis 
needy friends enjoy the profits arising from his works, and 
to allow himself acts of beneficence and generosity that were 
the joy of his heart. And when he had done all that, he 



And its Consequences. 507 

still found that he could not spend the surplus in England 
according to his tastes. After the death oi' his mother, no 
longer bound by his promise to her of not selling Newstead, 
he. resolved on eflecting the sale so as to settle his affairs 
definitively. The sale having failed, the forfeit brought him 
in £25,000 ; and he wrote to Moore, in September, 1814 : — 

"I shall know to-morrow whether a circumstance, of im- 
portance enough to change all my plans, will occur or not.* 
If it does not, I am off for Italy next month. 

" I have a few thousand pounds which I can't spend after 
my own heart in this climate, and so I shall go back to the 
south. Hobhouse, I think and hope, will go with me ; but 
whether he will or not, I shall. I want to see Venice and 
the Alps, and Parmesan cheeses, and look at the coasts of 
Greece, or rather Epirus, from Italy as I once did, or fancied 
I did, that of Italy, when off Coi-fu." 

A few days before writing this letter, his evil destiny had 
led him to take a step fatal to all his future happiness. 

A person, for whom he entertained both affection and def- 
erence, observing one day how unsettled he appeared in his 
state of mind and projects for the future, again reiterated, 
with more earnestness than ever, the advice to marry. 

After long discussions Lord Byron promised to do so. 
But who should be the object of his choice ? A young lady 
was named who seemed to possess all the qualities requisite 
for giving happiness in marriage. Lord Byron, on his side, 
suggested Miss Milbank, with whom he was then in corre- 
spondence. She was a niece of Lady Melbourne, who had 
thought of this union a year befgre ; a circumstance which 
probably decided Lord Byron's preference, for he liked Lady 
Melbourne very much. 

On hearing Miss Milbank's name his friend protested with 
great energy, begging him to remark, among other things, 
that Miss Milbank had no actual fortune, that his affairs were 
too much embarrassed for him to be able to marry a woman 
without money, and moi*eover that Miss Milbank was a learn- 
ed lady, a hlue-stocJcing, who could not possibly suit him. 
Ever docile to the voice of friendship, Lord Byron yielded, 

* This circumstance was liis proposal for Miss Milbank ; we shall see present- 
ly how it had taken place. 



508 Lord Byron's Marriage 

and allowed his frieud to write a proposal to the other lady. 
Soon after a negative answer arrived, one morning, that the 
two friends were together. 

" You see," said Lord Byron, " that after all it is Miss 
Milbank I am to marry ; I shall write to her !" He did so 
immediately ; and when the letter was finished, his friend 
feeling more and more opposed to such a choice, took it from 
him. After having read it, he exclaimed : — 

" Truly, this letter is so charming that it is a pity for it 
not to go. I never read a better effusion." " Then go it 
shall," replied Lord Byron, who sealed and sent it oiF, thus 
signing his own misfortune ! 

We have said that he was in correspondence with Miss 
Milbank. This is how he had made her acquaintance. 

Two years previously, at a London soiree, he saw sitting 
in the corner of a sofa a young girl whose simplicity of dress 
made her look as if she belonged to a less elevated position 
than most of the other girls in the room ; Moore told him, 
however, that she was a rich heiress. Miss Milbank, and that 
if he would marry her she might help him to restore the old 
Abbey of Newstead. Her modest look, in striking contrast 
with the stiffness and formality common to the aristocracy, 
interested Lord Byron. He had himself introduced, and 
some time after ended by asking her to marry him. His 
proposal, from motives that could not wound him, was not 
accepted then. But a year later Miss Milbank testified the 
desire of entering into correspondence with him. Thus the 
ground was prepared. When he sent his letter with a fresh 
proposal, it was accepted ^ill the more eagerly that a report 
had been spread of his wishing to marry a young and beau- 
tiful Lisli girl, which did not please Miss Milbank. Her an- 
swer was couched in very flattering terms, and the fatal mar- 
riage was thus decided on. This was perhaps the only time 
in his life that Lord Byron did not follow the counsels of 
friendship. It would indeed seem as if an evil genius had 
taken possession of his will. Warnings were not wanting ; 
but he refused to listen to them. " If you have any thing to 
say against my decision," wrote he to Moore, in his usual 
jesting way, after the marriage had been agreed on, " I beg 
you to say it. My resolve is taken, so positively, fixed, and 



And its Consequences. B09 

irrevocal)ly, that I can very well listen to reason, since now 
it can do me no more harm." 

And so he married Miss Milbank three months afterward. 
Daring the interval between the promise exchanged and the 
ceremony concluded, Lord Byron saw his betrothed frequent- 
ly. Had he no warning, no inspiration from his good genius 
during all that time ? Had he no fear of such perfection ? 
Did he not feel that a faultless coat of mail, like hers, might 
so have pressed upon her heart that no pulse would be left 
giving earnest of life ? Might not tenderness, piety, indul- 
gence, forbearance, the most amiable and sublime virtues 
belonging to a Christian Avoman, have their place filled in 
the breast of this perfect creature by another kind of sub- 
limity ? and was it not very possible that she would increase 
by one the number of those chaste wives who judge, con- 
demn, punish, and never forgive any thing that does not en- 
ter into the category of tlieir virtues, or rather of the single 
virtue they practice, and under shadow of which they con- 
sider themselves able to dispense with all others ? Did he 
not fear that the profound mathematical knowledge of that 
learned person might have slightly deadened her heart and 
given a dogmatic tone to her mind, of which he doubtless 
with his usual penetration suspected the narrowness, likely 
to render its science pernicious to the heart ? All this is 
easily to be believed, when we see how preoccupied he was 
before marriage. 

"At the beginning of the month of December, being call- 
ed up to town by business, I had opportunities, from being 
a good deal in my noble friend's society, of observing the 
state of his mind and feelings under the prospect of the im- 
I^ortant change he was now aljout to undergo; and it was 
with pain I found that those sanguine hopes with which I 
had sometimes looked forward to the happy influence of mar- 
riage, in winning him over to the brighter and better side 
of life, were, by a view of all the circumstances of his present 
destiny considerably diminished. While, at the same time, 
not a few doubts and misgivings, which had never before so 
sti'ongly occurred to me, with regard to his own fitness, un- 
der any circumstances, for the matrimonial tie, filled me al- 
together with a degree of foreboding anxiety as to his fate, 



510 LoKD Byron's Marriage 

which the unfortunate events that followed but too fully jus- 
tified." 

Lord Byron might still have avoided this misfortune by 
giving up marriage ; but the die was ca,st. His evil genius 
presented him with no other alternative than to rush on to 
the catastrophe. 

We must add that if, unfortimately, the halo of perfection 
supposed to encircle the heiress was calculated to make him 
tremble, it was also of a nature to flatter his self-love. This 
reputation was, in the eyes of Moore, the principal cause of 
his preference for Miss Milbank. However that may be, in 
the last days of December, accompanied by his friend Mr. 
Hobhouse, he set out for Seaham, the residence of Sir Ralph, 
Miss Milbank's father. And on the morning of the 2d of 
January, surrounded by visions of the past, by gloomy fore- 
bodings, having in his hand the fatal ring that had been dug 
up in his garden at the moment when Miss Milbank's con- 
sent arrived ; with a beating heart, and eyes all dizzj^, that 
would have made him draw back, if his honor had not been 
too far engaged. Lord Byron advanced toward the altar. 
From that fatal day, if his star of glory did not cease to shine, 
or even if it shone more brightly seen through the atmos- 
phere of misfortune, nevertheless repose and lasting happi- 
ness were gone for him. 

An heiress for a wnfe, but who had no actual fortune, nat- 
urally forced him into great expenses, that soon Avent beyond 
his resources. His creditors, lured by the riches said to be- 
long to Miss Milbank, came down upon him, as if the wife's 
fortune could be used to pay the husband's de'bts. 

His marriage had taken place in January, and already^ in 
October, he was obliged to .sell his library. Shortly after- 
ward his furniture was seized, and he had to undergo humil- 
iations, all the more keenly felt, that they were quite unmer- 
ited, since his debts were inherited with the property. Lord 
Byron — who had a real horror of debt — with his spirit of 
justice, moderate desires, simj^le tastes, detached as he was 
from material enjoyments, and even, perhaps, through pride, 
would never have fallen into such embarrassments if be had 
remained unmamed. Indeed, his creditors were patiently 
awaiting the sale of some propert5^ Besides, he was rich 



Ajstd its Consequences. 611 

enough while unmarried ; he could exercise hospitality, trav- 
el in good style, not even keep for himself the protiuce of his 
works, and, above all, never refuse to perform works of char- 
ity and benevolence. He wrote to one of his friends before 
marriage that his affiiirs were about to be settled, that he 
could live comfortably m England, and buy a prmcipality, 
if he wished, in Turkey. 

Thus, then, marriage alone drew upon him this new disas- 
ter, which he must have felt severely, and which, doubtless, 
led him to make reflections little favorable to the tie so fa- 
tally contracted. Then it was that he would have required 
to meet with kindness, indulgence, and peace at home ; thus 
supported, his heart would have endured every thing. 

Instead of that, what did he find ? A woman whose jeal- 
ousy was extreme, and who had her own settled way of liv- 
ing, and was unflinching in her ideas ; who united a convic- 
tion of her own wisdom to perfect ignorance of the human 
heart,* all the while fancying that she knew it»60 well ; Avho, 
far from consenting to modify her habits, would fain have 
imposed them on others. In short, a woman who had noth- 
ing in common with him, who was unable to understand him, 
or to find the road to his heart or mind ; finally, one to whom 
forgiveness seemed a weakness, instead of a virtue. Is it, 
then, astonishing that he shovdd have sufiered in such a de- 
pressing atmosphere ; that he should sometimes have been 
irritable, and have even allowed to escape him a few words 
likely to wound the susceptible self-love of his wife ? 

Lady Byron possessed one of those minds clever at rea- 
soning, but weak in judgment ; that can reason much without 
being reasonable, to use the words of a great philosophical 
moralist of our day ; one of those minds that act as if life 
were a problem in jurisprudence or geometry ; who argue, 
distinguish, and, by dint of syllogisms, deceive themselves 
learnedly. She always deceived herself in this way about 
Lord Byron. 

When she was in the family-way, and her confinement 
drawing near, the storm continued to gather above her hus- 
band's head. He was in correspondence with Moore, then 

* " Lady Byron," said Lord Bj'ron at Pisa. " and Mr. Medwin were continual- 
ly making portraits of me ; each one more unlike than the other." 



512 Lord Byron's Marriage 

absent from London. Moore's apprehensions Avith regard 
to the happiness likel}"^ to result from a union that had never 
appeared suitable in his eyes, had, nevertheless, calmed down 
on receiving letters from Lord Byron that expressed satisfac- 
tion. Yet during the first days of what is vulgarly termed 
the " honey-moon," Lord Byron sent Moore some very mel- 
ancholy verses, to be set to music, said he, and which begin 
thus : — 

" There's not a joy the world can give like that it takes away." 

Moore had already felt some vague disquietude, and he 
asked why he allowed his mind to dwell on such sorrowful 
ideas ? Lord Byron replied that he had written these verses 
on learning the death of a friend of his childhood, the Duke 
of Dorset, and, as his subsequent letters were full of jests, 
Moore became reassured. Lord Byron said he was happy, 
and so he really was ; for Lady Byron, not being jealous then, 
continued to Ijie gentle and amiable. 

" But these indications of a contented heart soon ceased. 
His mention of the partner of his home became more rare 
and formal, and there was observable, I thought, through 
some of his letters, a feeling of unquiet and weariness that 
brought back all those gloomy anticij^ations which I had, 
from the first, felt regarding his fate." 

Above all, there Avere expressions in his letters that seem- 
ed ol sad augury. For instance, in announcing the birth of 
his little girl, Lord Byron said that he was absorbed in five 
hundred contradictory contemplations, although he had only 
one single object in view, which would jjrobably come to 
nothing, as it mostly happens with all we desire : — • 

" But never mind," he said, " as somebody says, ''for the 
hhte sky bends over alV I only could be glad if it bent over 
me where it is a little bluer, like shyish top of blue Olympus^ 

On reading this letter, dated the 5th of January, full of as- 
pirations after a blue sky, Moore Avas struck with the tone 
of melancholy pervading it ; and, knoAving that it was Lord 
Byron's habit when under the jjressure of sorrow and uneasi- 
ness, to seek relief in expressing his yearnings after freedom 
and after other climes, he wi'ote to him in these terms : — 

" Do you know, my dear Byron, there was something in 



And its Consequences. 513 

your last letter — a sort of mystery, as well as a want of your 
usual elasticity of spirits — which has hung upon my mind 
unpleasantly ever since. I long to be near you, that I might 
know how you realty look and feel, for these letters tell noth- 
ing, and one word a quattr* occhi, is worth whole reams of 
correspondence. But only do tell me you are happier than 
that letter has led me to fear, and I shall be satisfied." 

" It was," says Moore, " only a few weeks after the ex- 
change of these letters, that Lady Byron took the resolution 
of separating from him. She had left London at the end of 
January, on a visit to her parents, in Leicestershire, and Lord 
Byron was to come and join her there soon after. They had 
imrted with mutual demonstrations of attachment and of 
good understanding. On the journey Lady Byron wrote a 
letter to her husband, couched in playful, aifectionate lan- 
guage. What, then,'must have been his astonishment when, 
directly after her arrival at Kirby Mallory, her father, Sir 
Ralph, wrote to tell Lord Byron that his daughfer was going 
to remain with them, and would return to him no more." 

This unexpected stroke fell heavily upon him. The pe- 
cuniary embarrassments growing up since his marriage (for 
he had already undergone eight or nine executions in liis 
own house), had then reached their climax. He was then, 
to use his own energetic expression, alone at his hearth, his 
penates transfixed around; and then was he also condemned 
to receive the unaccountable intelligence that the wife who 
had just parted from him in the most affectionate manner, 
had abandoned him forever. 

His state %f mind can not be told, nor, perhaps, be im- 
agined. Still he describes it in some passages of his letters, 
showing at the same time the firmness, dignity, and strength 
of mind that always distinguished him. For example, he 
wrote to Rogers, two weeks after this thunderbolt had fallen 
upon him : — 

" I shall be very glad to see you if you like to call, though 
I am at present contending with the ' slings and arrows of 
outrageous fortune,' some of which have struck me from a 
quarter whence I did not, indeed, expect them ; but, no mat- 
ter, there is a ' world elsewhere,' and I will cut my way 
through this as I can. If you write to Moore, Avill you tell 

Y2 



514 Lord Byron's Marriage 

him that I shall answer his letter the moment I can muster 
time and si^irits. Ever yours, Bykon." 

This strength of mind he only found p, month afterward, 
and then he wrote to him : — 

" I have not answered your letter for a time, and at pres- 
ent the reply to it might extend to such a length that I shall 
delay it till it can be made in jjerson, and then I will shorten 
it as much as I can. I am at war with all the world and my 
wife, or, rather, all the world and my wife are at war with 
me, and have not yet crushed me, and shall not crush me, 
Avhatever they may do. I don't know that in the course of 
a hair-breadth existence I was ever, at home or abroad, in ^ 
situation so completely uprooted of jDresent pleasure, or ra- 
tional hope for the futui-e, as this time. I say this because I 
think so, and feel it. But I shall not si?ik under it the more 
for that mode of considering the question. I have made up 
my mind. 

" By the way, however, you must not believe all you hear 
on the subject ; but don't attempt to defend me. If you suc- 
ceeded in that it would be a mortal, or an immortal, offense. 
Who can bear refutation ?"* 

And, after having spoken of his wife's family, he con- 
cludes in these terms : — 

"Those who know what is going on say that the mys- 
terious cause of our domestic misunderstandings is a Mrs. 

C , now a kind of house-keeper and spy of Lady N , 

who was a washer-woman in former days." 

Swayed by this idea, he went so far then in Ms generosity 
as to exonerate his wife, and accuse himself; whereupon 
Moore answered that, " after all, his misfortunes lay m the 
choice he had made of a wife, lohich he (Moore) had never ap- 
provedy 

Lord Byron hastened to reply that he was wrong, aikl 
that Lady Byron's conduct while with him had not deserved 
the smallest reproach, giving her, at the same time, great 
praise. But this answer, which, according to Moore, forces 
admiration for the generous candor of hint who wrote it ichile 
adding to the sadness and strangeness of the whole affair — 

* Moore, Letter 233. • 



And its Consequences. 515 

this answer, of such extraordiuary generosity, will better 
tind its place elsewhere. It contains expressions that show 
his i-eal state of soul under the cruel cii-cumstanccs : — 

" I have to battle with all kinds of unpleasantness, includ- 
ing private and pecuniary difficulties, etc. 

" . . . . It is nothing to bear the privations of adversity, 
or, more properly, ill-fortune, but ray pride recoils from its 
indignities. However, I have no quarrel with that same 
pride, which will, I think, be my buckler through every thing. 
If my heart could have been broken it would have been 
so years ago, and by events more afflicting than these. . . . 
Do you remember the lines I sent you early last year ? I 
don't wish to claim the character of ' Vates' the jDrophet, but 
were they not a little proj^hetic ? I mean those beginning : 
' There's not a joy the world can,' etc. They were the tru- 
est, though the most melancholy, I ever wrote." 

To this letter Moore answered immediately : — 

" I had certainly no right to say any thing about the un- 
luckiness of your choice, though I rejoice now that I did, as 
it has drawn from you a tribute which, however unaccount- 
able and mysterious it rendei's the whole aflair, is highly 
honorable to both parties. What I meant in hinting a doubt 
with respect to the object of your selection, did not imply 
the least impeachment of that perfect amiableiress which the 
world, I find, by common consent, allows to her. I only 
feared that she might have been too perfect, too precisely ex- 
cellent, too matter-of-fact a paragon for you to coalesce loith 
comfortably , .... and that a person whose perfection hung 
in more easy folds about her, whose brightness was softened 
doAvn by some of ' those lair defects which best conciliate 
love,' would, by appealing more dependently to your protec- 
tion, have stood a much better chance with your good-natui-e. 
All these suppositions, however, I have been led into by my 
intense anxiety to acquit you of any thing like a capricious 
abandonment of your wife ; and, totally in the dark as I am 
with respect to all but the fact of your separation, you can 
not conceive the solicitude — the fearful solicitude — with 
which I look forward to a history of the transaction from 
your own lips when we meet — a history in which I am sure 
of at least one virtue, manly candor." 



616 Lord Byron's Marriage 

Those who knew Lord Byron, gifted as he was with so 
much that seemed to render it impossible for any woman to 
resign herself to the loss of his love ; with so much to make 
a wife proud of bearing his name ; may well ask what strange 
sort of nature Lady Byron could have possessed to act as 
she did toward him ; and whether, if she really raaiTied out 
of vanity (as Lord Byron one day told Medwin, at Pisa), and 
her heart being full of pride only, she found some greater 
satisfaction for her vanity in the courage and perseverance 
she fancied displayed in deserting him. But, in order to 
view her inexplicable conduct with any sort of indulgence, 
we must say that Lady Byron was an only and a spoilt child, 
a slave to rule, to habits and ideas as unchanging and inflexi- 
ble as the figures she loved to study ; that, being accustomed 
to the comforts of a rich house, where she was idolized, she 
could not do without her regular comforts, so generall}^ ap- 
pi'eciated and considered necessary by English people. But 
it was no easy matter to satisfy all her tastes with mathe- 
matical regularity, to let her keep up all her habits, and, 
above all, to make Lord Byron share them in their married 
life. Li the first place, Lord Byron, who was naturally un- 
English in taste, had, moreover, through his long stay 
abroad, given up the peculiarities of English habits. He did 
not dine every day, and Avhen he did it was a cenobite's 
meal, little suited to the taste of a true Englishman. He 
breakfasted on a cup of green tea, without sugar, and the 
yolk of an egg, which was swallowed standing. The com- 
fortable fireside, the indispensable roast-beef, and the regular 
evening tea, were not appreciated by him ; and, indeed, it 
was a real pain to him to see women eat at all. Not one of 
his young wife's habits was shared by him. He did not 
think his soul lost by going to bed at dawn, for he liked to 
write at night ; or by doing othe^' things at what she called 
irregular hours; and he must have been at least astonished 
on hearing himself asked, three weeks after marriage, when 
he intended giving up his versifying habits ? 

But he did not give them up ; nor could he have done so 
had he wished it. Lady Byron must have flattered herself 
with the idea of ruling him, of showing the world her power 
over her husband. As long as their resources sufficed for 



And its Consequences. 517 

a life of luxury, both parties might have cherished illusion, 
and put off reflection. But when creditors, attracted by the 
name of the wealthy heiress — who in reality had only brought 
her expectations with her — began to pour in, and that pe- 
cuniary embarrassment and humiliations were added to home 
incompatibilities, then, perhaps, Lord Byron became irritable 
sometimes, and Lady Byron must have felt more than ever 
the painful absence of those comforts whose enjoyment cause 
many other annoyances to be forgotten. She must often 
have compared her life then, full of mortifications, and, per- 
haps, of solitude, with the one so comfortable and agreeable 
(for her) she formerly led at Kirby Mallory, in the midst of 
her relatives. Indeed, they had spent two months there, 
both saying they were happy ; for at this period of the 
honey-moon, Lord Byi-on, kind as he was, doubtless yielded 
to all the caprices and habits of his hosts. Nevertheless, 
through the veil of his customary jests and assurances to 
Moore that he was quite satisfied, it is easy to see how tired 
he was, and how little the life at Seaham was suited to hira. 
" I am in such a state of sameness and stagnation, and so 
totally occupied in consuming the fruits, and sauntei'ing, and 
playing dull games at cards, and yawning, and trying to read 
old ' Annual Registers ' and the daily papers, and gathering 
shells on the shore, and watching the growth of stunted 
gooseberry bushes in the garden, that I have neither time nor 
sense to say more than yours ever, Byron." 

And then another time he wrote, — 

" I have been very comfortable here, listening to that d — d 
monologue which elderly gentlemen call conversation, and 
in which my pious father-in-law repeats himself every even- 
ing, except when he plays upon the fiddle. However, they 
'have been very kind and hospitable, and I like them and the 
place vastly." 

Again, feeling his thought in bondage at Seaham, when it 
would fain have wandered free beneath some sunny sky, he 
wrote to Moore, " By the Avay, don't engage yourself in any 
travelling expedition, as I have a plan of travel into Italy, 
which we will discuss. And then, think of the poesy where- 
withal we should overflow from Venice to Vesuvius, to say 



518 Lord Byron's Marriage 

nothing of Greece, through all which — God willing — we might 
perambulate." 

But on quitting Seaham to return home, without prevent- 
ing Lady Byron from continuing to follow her own tastes, it 
is likely that he wished to resume his old habits: his beloved 
solitude, so necessary to him, his fasts, his hom'S for study and 
rest, very different from those of Seaham, And then she 
must have found it troublesome to have a husband, who was 
not only indifferent to English comforts, but who even dis- 
liked to see women eat ! Avho, despite his embarrassments, 
continued to refuse appropriating for his OAvn use the money 
given and offered by his publisher, making it over instead to 
the poor, and even borrowing to help his friends and indi- 
gent authors.* She could not have known how he wonld 
ever get disentangled. Being extremely jealous, she became 
the easy dupe of malicious persons ; and under the influence 
of that Avicked woman, Mrs. Claremont, allowed herself to be 
persuaded that her liusband committed grave faults, though 
in reality they were but slight or even imaginary ones. She 
forced open his writing-desk, and found in it several proofs 
of intrigues that liad taken place previous to his marriage. 
In the frenzy of her jealousy. Lady Byron sent these letters 
to" the husband of the lady compromised, but he had the 
good sense to take no notice of them. Such a revolting pro- 
ceeding on the part of Lady Byron requires no commentary : 
it can not be justified. Meanwhile the conjugal abode was 
given up to bailiffs, and desolation reigned in Lord Byron's 
soul, lie had lately become a father. This was the mo- 
ment that his wife chose for leaving him; and the first proof 
of love she gave their daughter, as soon as she set foot in her 
own home, Avas to abandon that child's father and the house 
where she could no longer find the mode of life to which she 
had been accustomed. At Kirby Mallory, the vindictive' 
Lady Noel, who detested Lord Byron, doubtless did the rest, 
together with the governess. And the young heiress, just 
enriched by a legacy inherited from an uncle, thus newly re- 
stored to wealth, had not courage to leave it and them all 
again. With the kind of nature she possessed, she must 
have taken pride in a sort of exaggei'ated firmness ; thus 
* At this time of embarrassment he borrowed a large sum to give to Coleridge. 



And its Consequences. 519 

seeking to gain strength for trampling under foot all heart- 
emotions, as if they were so many weaknesses, incompatible 
with the stern principles that she considered virtues. By 
assuming the point of view proper to some minds, it is easy 
to conceive all this, especially when one knows England. 

But was it really for the purpose of allowing her to give 
such a S2)ectacle to the world, and to secure for herself the 
comforts of life, that God had given to her keeping Lord By- 
ron's noble spirit ? Did she forget that it was not simply a 
good, honest, ordinary man, like the generality of husbands, 
that she had married ; but that Heaven, having crowned his 
brow with the rays of genius, imposed far other obligations 
on his companion ? Did she forget that she was responsible 
before God 'and before that country whose pride he was 
about to become ? Ought she to have preferred an easy life 
to the honor of being his wife ; of sustaining him in his 
weaknesses ; of consoling and forgiving him, if necessary ; 
in short, of being his guardian angel ? If she aspired to the 
reputation of a virtuous woman, could true virtue have done 
otherwise? Ere this God has judged her above; but, here 
below, can those jiossessing hearts have any indulgence for 
her? 

We hear constantly repeated — because it was once said — 
that men of great genius are less capable than ordinary in- 
dividuals of experiencing calm affections and of settling 
down into those easy habits which help to cement domestic 
life. By dint of repeating this it has become an axiom. But 
on Avhat grounds is it founded ? Because these privileged 
beings give themselves to studies requiring solitude, in order 
to abstract and concentrate their thoughts ; because, their 
mental riches being greater, they are more independent of 
the outer world and the intellectual resources of their fellow- 
creatures ; because, through the abundance of their own re- 
sources, their mind acquires a certain refinement, likely to 
make them deem the society of ordinary persons tiresome ; 
does it therefore necessarily follow that the goodness and 
sensibility of their hearts are blunted, and that there may 
not be, amid the great variety of women, hearts and minds 
worthy of comprehending them, and of making it their duty 
to extend a larger amount of forbearance and indulgence in 



520 Lord Byron's Marriage 

return for the glory and happiness of being tlie companions 
of these noble beings ? It is remarked, in support of the 
above theory, that almost all men of genius who have mar- 
ried — Dante, Milton, Shakspeare, Dryden, Byron, and many 
others — were unhaj^py. But have these observers examined 
well on which side lay .the cause of unhappiness ? Who will 
say that if Dante, instead of Gemma Donati, " the ferocious 
wife " (a thought expressed by Lord Byron in his " Prophe- 
cy," evidently to appropriate it to himself, speaking of " the 
cold companion loho brought him niinfor her dowry) ;" who 
Avill say that if Dante, instead of Gemma Donati, had mar- 
ried his Beatrice Portinari, she would not have been the 
companion and soother of his exile ? that the bread of the 
foreigner shared with her would not have seemed less hitter ? 
and that he would not have found it less fatiguing to mount^ 
leaning on her^ the staircase leading to another'' s dwelling ? — * 

"Lo scendere e il salio per I'nltrin scale." — Dante. 

And can we doubt that Milton's misfortune was caused by 
his unhappy choice of a wife, since almost dii'ectly after her 
arrival at their conjugal home she became alarmed at her 
husband's literary habits and also at the solitude and pover- 
ty reigning in the house, and finally abandoned him after a 
month's trial ? To speak only of England, was it- not from 
similar causes, or nearly so, that the amiable Shakspeare's 
misfortune arose — also that of Dryden, Addison, Steele ? And, 
indeed, the same may be said of all the great men belonging 
to whatsoever age or country. 

If we were to enter into a polemic on this subject, or sim- 
ply to make conscientious researches, there would be many 
chances of 23roving, in opposition to the axiom, that the fault 
of these great men lay in the bad choice of their helpmates. 
In truth, if there have been a Gemma Donati and a Milbank, 
we also find in ancient times a Calpurnia and a Portia among 
the wives of great men ; and, in modern times, wives of poets, 
who have been the honor of their sex, proud of their hus- 
bands, and living only for them. Ought not these examples 
at least to destroy the absolute natui'e of the theory, making 
it at best conditional ? The larger number of great men, it 
is true, did not marry; of this number we find, Michael An- 



And its Consequences. 521 

golo, Rapliacl, Petrarcli, Ariosto, Tasso, Cervantes, Voltaire, 
Pope, Altieri, and Cauova ; and many others among tlie poets 
and philosophers, Bacon, Newton, Galileo, Descartes, Bayle, 
and Leibnitz. 

What does that prove, if not that they either would not 
or could not marry, hut certainly not that they were incapa- 
ble of being good husbands ? Besides, a thousand causes — 
apart from the fear of being unhappy in domestic life, con- 
siderations of fortune, prior attachments, etc. — may have pre- 
vented them. But as to Lord Byron, at least, it is still more 
certain with regard to him than to any other, that he might 
have been happy had he made a better choice : if circum- 
stances had only been tolerable, as he himself says. Lord 
Byron had none of those faults that often disturb harmony, 
because they put the wife's virtue to too great a trial. If 
the best disposition, according to a deep moralist, is that 
which gives much and exacts nothing, then assuredly his de- 
serves to be so characterized. Lord Byron exacted nothing 
for himself Moreover, discussion, contradiction, teasing, 
were insupportable to him ; his amiable jesting way even 
precluded them. Li all the circumstances and all the de- 
tails of his life he disjjlayed that high genei'osity, that con- 
temjit of p)etty, selfish, material calculations so well adapted 
for gaining hearts in general, and especially those of women. 
Add to that the prestige belonging to his great beauty, his 
wit, his grace, and it will be easy to understand the love he 
must have inspired as soon as he became known. 

" Pope remarks," says Moore, " that extraordinary genius- 
es have the misfortune to be admired rather than loved ; but 
I can say, from my own personal experience, that Lord By- 
ron was an exception to this rule."* 

Nevertheless, Lord Byron, though exceptional in so many 
things, yet belonged to the first order of geniuses. There- 
fore he could not escape some of the laws belonging to these 
first-rate natures : certain habits, tendencies, sentiments — I 
may almost say infirmities — of genius deriving their origin 
from the same sympathies^ the same wants. 

He required to have certain things granted to him : his 
hour^ for solitude, the silence of his library, which he some- 
* Moore, p. 389. 



522 Lord Byron's Marriage 

times preferred to every tiling, even to the society of the 
woman he loved. It was wrong to wish by force to shut 
him up to read the Bible, or to make him come to tea and 
regulate all his hours as a good priest might do. When he 
was plunged in the delights of Plato's " Banquet," or convers- 
ing with his own ideas, it was folly to interrupt him. But 
this state was exceptional with him. "O/ie does not have 
fever habitually^'' said he of himself, characterizing this state 
of excitement that belongs to composition ; and as soon as 
he returned to his usual state, and that his mind, disengaged 
fi'om itself, came down from the heights to which it had soar- 
ed, what amiability then, what a charm in all he said and 
did ! Was not one hour passed with him then a payment 
with rich usury for all the little concessions his genius re- 
quired ? And lastly, if we descend well into the depths of 
his soul, by all he said and did, by all his sadness, joy, ten- 
derness, we may be well convinced that none more than he 
was susceptible of domestic happiness. 

" If I could have been the husband of the Countess G ," 

said he to Mrs. B , a few days only before setting out for 

Greece, " we should have been cited, I am certain, as samj)les 
of conjugal happiness, and our retired domestic life would 
have made us respectable ! But alas ! I can not marry her." 

It is also by his latest affections that he proved how, if 
he had been united to a woman after his own heart, he might 
have enjoyed and given all the domestic happiness that God 
vouchsafes us here below, and that when love should have 
undergone the transformations produced by tinie and custom, 
he would have known how to rej^lace the poetic enchantments 
of love's first days, by feelings graver, more unchanging too, 
and no less tender and sacred. 

But we must interrogate those who knew and saw him 
personally, and in the first place Moore ; for not only was 
Moore acquainted with Lord Byron's secret soul, but to him 
had the poet confided the treasure of his memoirs, whose 
principal object was to throw light on the most fatal event 
of his life, and whose sacrifice, made in deference to the sus- 
ceptibilities of a few living nullities, will be an eternal re- 
morse for England. Now this is how Moore expresses him- 
self on this subject : — 



And its Consequences. 523 

"With respect to the causes that may be supposed to 
have led to this separation, it seerus needless, with the char- 
acters of both parties before our eyes, to go in quest of any 
very remote or mysterious reasons to account for it." 

After observmg that men of great genius have never seem- 
ed made for domestic happiness, through certain habits, cer- 
tain wants of their nature, and certain faults, which appear, 
he says, like the shade thrown by genius in proportion to its 
greatness, Moore adds that Lord Byron still was, in many re- 
spects, a singular exception to this rule, for his heart was so 
sensitive" and his passions so ardent, that the world of reality 
never ceased to hold a large place in his sympathies ; that 
for the rest, his imagination could never usurp the place of 
reality, neither in his feelings nor in the objects, exciting 
them. 

" The poet in Lord Byron," says Moore, " never absorbed 
the man. From this very mixture has it arisen that his 
pages bear so deeply the stamp of real life, and that in the 
works of no poet with the exception of Shakspeare, can every 
various mood of the mind — whether solemn or gay, whether 
inclined to the ludicrous or the sublime, whether seeking to 
divert itself with the follies of society or panting after the 
grandeur of solitary nature — find so readily a strain of senti- 
ment in accordance with its every passing tone." 

Nevertheless he did not completely escape the usual fate 
of great geniuses, since he also experienced, though rarely, 
and always with good cause, that sadness which, as Shak- 
speare says, — 

" Sicklies the face of happiness itself." 

" To these faults, and sources of faults, inherent in his own 
sensitive nature, he added also many of those which a long 
indulgence of self-will generates — the least compatible, of all 
others, wnth that system of mutual concession and sacrifice 
by which the balance of domestic peace is maintained. In 
him they were softened down by good-nature. When we 
look back, indeed, to the unbridled career, of which this mar- 
riage was meant to be the goal — to the rapid and restless 
course in which his life had run along, like a burning train, 
through a series of wanderings, adventures, successes, and 
passions, the fever of all which was still upon hiui, when, with 



524 Lord Byron's Marriage 

the same headlong recklessness, he rushed into this marriage, 
it can but little surprise us that, in the space of one short 
year, he should not have been able to recover all at once 
from his bewilderment, or to settle down into that tame level 
of conduQjb which the close observers of his every action re- 
quired. As well might it be expected that a steed like his 
own Mazeppa's — 

' Wild as the wild deer and untaught, 
With spur and bridle undetiled,' 

should stand still, when reined, without chafing or champing 
the bit.* 

"■ Even had the new condition of life into which he passed 
been one of prosperity and smoothness, some time, as well as 
tolerance, must still have been allowed for the subsiding of 
so excited a spirit into rest. But, on the contrary, his mar- 
riage was at once a signal for all the arrears and claims of a 
long-accumulating state of embarrassment to explode upon 
him ; his door was almost daily beset by duns, and his house 
nine times during that year in possession of bailifls ; while, 
in addition to these anxieties, he had also the pain of fancy- 
ing that the eyes of enemies and spies were upon him, even 
under his own roof, and that his every hasty word and look 
were interpreted in the most perverted light. 

" He saw but little society, his only relief from the 
thoughts which a life of such embarrassment brought with it 
was in those avocations which his duty, as a member of the 
Drury Lane Committee, imposed upon him. And here, in 
this most unlucky connection with the theatre, one of the 
fatalities of his short year of trial, as husband, lay. From the 
reputation which he had previously acquired^for gallantries, 
and the sort of reckless and boyish levity to which — often in 
very bitterness of soul — he gave way, it was not difficult to 
bring suspicion 'upon some of those acquaintances which his 
frequent intercourse with the green-room induced him to 
form, or even (as in one instance was the case) to connect 
Avitli his name injuriously that of a person to whom he had 
scarcely ever addressed a single word. 

" Notwithstanding, however, this ill-starred concurrence 
of circumstances, which might have palliated any excesses 

* Moore's Life, vol. iii. p. 209. 



And its Consequences. 525 

either of temper or conduct into which they drove him,, it 
was, after all, I am persuaded, to no such serious causes that 
the unfortunate alienation, which so soon ended in disunion, 
is to be traced. 

"'In all the unhappy marriages I have ever seen,' says 
Steele, ' tlie great cause of evil has proceeded from slight oc- 
casions,' and to this remark, I think, the marriage under our 
consideration would not be found, upon inquiry, to be an ex- 
ception. Lord Byron himself, indeed, when at Cephalonia, a 
short time before his death, seems to have expressed, in a few 
words, the whole pith of the mystery. 

"An English gentleman, with whom he was conversing on 
the subject of Lady Byron, having ventured to enumerate to 
him the various causes he had heard alleged for the separa- 
tion, the noble poet, Vho had seemed much amused with their 
absurdity and falsehood, said, after listening to them all : 
' The causes, my dear sir, were too simj^le to be easily found 
out.' 

"Li truth, the circumstances, so unexampled, that attended 
their separation, the last words of the wife to the husband 
being those of the most playful affection, Avhile the language 
of the husband toward the wife was in a strain, as the world 
knows, of tenderest eulogy, are in themselves a sufficient 
proof that, at the time of their parting, there could have been 
no very deep sense of injury on either side. It Avas not till 
afterward that, in both bosoms, the repulsive force came into 
operation, when, to the party which had taken the first deci- 
sive step in the strife, it became naturally a point of pride to 
persevere in it with dignity, and this unbendingness pro- 
voked, as naturally, in the haughty spirit of the other, a 
strong feeling of resentment which overflowed, at last, in 
acrimony and scorn. If there be any truth, however, in the 
principle, that they never pardon who have done the wrong, 
Lord Byron, who was, to the last, disposed to reconciliation, 
proved, at least, that his conscience was not troubled by any 
very guilty recollections. 

" But "though it would have been difficult perhaps, for the 
victims of this strife themselves to have pointed out the real 
cause for their disunion, beyond that general incom]iatibility 
which is the canker of all such marriages, the public, which 



526 Lord Byron's Marriage 

seldom allows itself to be at faialt on these occasions, was, as 
usual, ready with an ample supply of reasons for the breach, 
all tending to blacken tke already-darkly painted character of 
the poet, and representing him, in short, as a finished monster 
of cruelty and depravity. The reputation of the object of 
his choice for every possible virtue, was now turned against 
him by his assailants, as if the excellences of the wife were 
proof positive of every enormity they chose to charge upon 
the husband. Meanwhile, the unmoved silence of Lady By- 
ron under the repeated demands made for a specification of 
her charges against him, left to malice and imagination the 
fullest range for their combined industry. It was according- 
ly stated, and almost univei-sally believed, that the noble 
lord's second proposal to Miss Milbank had been but with a 
view to revenge himself for the slight inflicted by her refusal 
of the first, and that he himself had confessed so much to her 
on their way from the church. At the time when, as the 
reader has seen from his own honey-moon letters, he in all 
faith fancied himself happy, and even boasted, in the pride 
of his imagination, that if marriage were to be upon lease, he 
would gladly renew his own for a terra of ninety-nine years ! 
" At this very time, according to these veracious chronicles, 
he was employed in darkly following up the aforesaid scheme 
of revenge, and tormenting his lady by all sorts of unmanly 
cruelties — such as firing off })istols, to frighten her as she lay 
in bed, and other such freaks.* To the falsehoods concerning 
his green-room intimacies, and particularly with respect to 

* It is true that fhce Lord Byron discharged a pistol, by accident, in Lady 
BjTon's room, when she was enciente. This action, coupled with the preoccupa- 
tions and sadness overwhelming Lord Byron's mind at this time, and further aid- 
ed by the insinuation of Mrs. Claremont, made Lady Byron begin and continue 
to suspect that he was mad, and so fully did she believe it, that from that hour, 
she could never see him come near her without trembling. It was under the in- 
fluence of this absurd idea that she left him. Lady BjTon was not guiltj' of the 
reports then current against him. They were spread abroad by her parents : she, 
on the contrary, as long as she thought him mad, felt great sorrow at it. It was 
only when she had to persuade herself that he was not mad, that she vowed ha- 
tred against him, convinced as she was that he had only married her out of re- 
venge, and not from love. But if an imaginarj' fear, and even an unreasonable 
ji>alousy may be her excuse (just as one excuses a monomania), can one equallj' 
forgive her silence? Such a silence is morally what are physically the poisons 
which kill at once, and dofy all remedies, thus insuring the culprit's safety. 
This silence it is which will ever be her crime, for by it she poisoned the life of 
her husband. 



And its Consequences, 627 

one beautiful actress, with Avliom, in reality, he had hardly 
ever exchanged a single word, I have already adverted ; and 
the extreme confidence with which this tale was circulated 
and believed affords no unfair specimen of the sort of evidence 
with which the public, in all such fits of moral wrath, is sat- 
isfied. It is, at the same time, very far from my intention to 
allege that, in the course of the noble poet's intercourse with 
the theatre, he was not sometimes led into a line of acquaint- 
ance and converse, unbefitting, if not dangerous to, the steadi- 
ness of married life. But the imputations against him on 
this head were not the less unfounded, as the sole case in 
which he afforded any thing like real grounds for such an ac- 
cusation did not take place till after the period of the separa- 
tion. 

"Not content with such ordinary and tangible charges, 
the tongue of rumor was emboldened to proceed still further ; 
and, presuming upon the mysterious silence maintained by 
one of the parties, ventured to throw out dark hints and 
vague insinuations, of which the fancy of every hearer was 
left to fill ixp the outline as he pleased. In consequence of 
all this exaggeration, such an outcry was now raised against 
Lord Byron as, in no case of private life, perhaps, was ever 
before witnessed ; nor had the whole amount of fame which 
he had gathered, in the course of the last four years, much ex- 
ceeded in proportion the reproach and obloquy that wei*e 
now, within the space of a few weeks, heaped upon him. In 
addition to the many who, no doubt, conscientiously believed 
and reprobated what they had but too much right, whether 
viewing him as poet or man of fashion, to consider credible 
excesses, there were also actively on the alert that large class 
of persons who seem to think that inveighing against the 
vices of others is equivalent to virtue in themselves, together 
with all those natural haters of success who, having long 
been disgusted with the splendor of the poet, were now en- 
abled, in the guise of champions for innocence, to wreak their 
spite on the man. In every various form of paragraph, 
pamphlet, and caricature, both his character and person were 
held up to odium. Hardly a voice was raised, or at least 
listened to, in his behalf; and though a few faithful friends 
remained unshaken by his side, the utter hopelessness of stem- 



528 Lord Byron's Marriage 

miiig the torrent was felt as well by them as by himself, and, 
after an effort or two to gain a fair hearing, they submitted 
in silence." 

As to Lord Byron, he hardly attempted to defend himself 
Among all these slanders, he only wished to repel one that 
wounded his generous pride beyond endurance; and so he 
wrote to Rogers : — 

" You are of the few persons with whom I have lived in 
what is called intimacy, and have heard me at times convers- 
ing on the untoward topic of my recent family disquietudes. 
Will you have the goodness to say to me at once, whether 
you ever heard me speak of her with disrespect, with unkind- 
ness, or defending myself at her expense by any serious im- 
putation of any description against her? Did you never hear 
me say, 'that when there was a right or a wrong, she had 
the right ?' The reason I put these questions to you or others 
of my friends is, because I am said, by her and hers, to have 
resorted to such means of exculpation." 

It makes one's heart bleed to see this noble intellect forced 
by the stupid cruel persecution of wicked fools to descend 
into the arena and justify himself But he soon ceased all 
kind of defense. A struggle of this sort was most repugnant 
to him. At first Lord Byron had counted on his wife's re- 
tui'n, which would, indeed, have proved his best justification. 
When he saw this return deferred, he asked simply for an in- 
quiry, but could not obtain what he solicited. His accusers, 
unable to state any thing definite against him, naturally pre- 
ferred calumny and magnanimous silence to inquiry ! At 
last, when he felt that reunion had become improbable, and 
that his friends, for want of moral courage and independence, 
confined themselves to mere condolence, he sought for strength 
in the testimony of conscience and in his determination of 
one day making the whole ti'uth known. And he did so in 
effect, a year later, while he was in Italy, and when all hope 
of reunion was over. Then it was that he wrote his memoirs. 

Here perhaps I ought to speak of one of England's great- 
est crimes, or rather, of the crime committed by a few English- 
men : I mean the destruction of his memoirs^ a deed perpe- 
trated for the sake of screening the self-love and the follies, 
if not the crimes, of a whole host of insignificant beings. 



And its Consequences. 529 

But, having already spoken of that in another chapter, I will 
content myself with repeating here that these memoirs were 
all the more precious, as their principal object was to make 
known the truth ; that the impression they left on the mind 
was a perfect conviction of the writer's sincerity ; that Lord 
Byron possessed the most generous of souls, and that the 
separation had no other cause but incompatibility of disposi- 
tion between the two parties. Had he not given irrefragable 
proof of the truth of these memoirs, by sending them to be 
read and commented on by Lady Byron? We know wutli 
what cruel disdain she met this generous proceeding. As to 
their morality, I will content myself with quoting the exact 
expressions used by Lady B , wife of the then ambassa- 
dor in Italy, to whom Moore gave them to read, and who 
had copied them out entirely : — 

" I read these memoirs at Florence,^'' said she to Countess 

G , " and I assure you that I might have given them, to 

my daughter of fifteen to read, so perfectly free are they from 
any stain of immorality.'''' 

Let i;s then repeat once more, that they, as well as the last 
cantos of " Don Juan," and the journal he kept in Greece, 
were sacrificed for the sole purpose of destroying all memen- 
to of the guilty weakness of persons calling themselves his 
friends, and also of hiding the opinions, not always very flat- 
tering, entertained by Lord Byron about a number of living- 
persons, who had unfortunately survived him. It is difficult 
to conceive in any case, how these memoirs written at Ven- 
ice, when his heart was torn with grief and bitterness, could 
possibly have been silent as to the injustice and calumny 
overwhelming him, or even as to the pusillanimous behavior 
of so-called friends ; while even writers generally hostile no 
longer took part against him. 

For example, this is how Macaulay speaks of him, — Mac- 
aulay who was not over-lenient toward Lord Byron, whom 
he never personally knew, and who is seldom just as well 
from party spirit as from his desii-e of shining in antithesis 
and high-sounding phrases : — 

'At twenty-four he found himself on the highest pinna- 
cle of literary fame, along with Walter Scott, Wordsworth, 
Southey, and a crowd of other distinguished writers. There 

Z 



530 Lord Byron's Marriage 

is scarcely an instance in liistory of so sudden a rise to so 
dizzy an eminence. Every thing that could stimulate, and 
every thing that could gratify the strongest propensities of 
our nature, the gaze of a hundred drawing-rooms, the accla- 
mation of the whole nation, the applause of applauded men, 
the love of lovely women, — all this world, and all the glory 
of it, were at once offered to a youth to whom nature had 
given violent passions, and whom education had never taught 
to control them. He lived as many men live who have no 
similar excuse to j)lead for their faults. But his countrymen 
and countrywomen would love and admire him. They were 
resolved to see in his excesses only the flash and outbreak of 
that same fiery mind which glowed in his poetry. He at- 
tacked religion; yet in religious circles his name was men- 
tioned with fondness, and in many religious ])ublications his 
works were censured with singular tenderness. He lampoon- 
ed the prince regent, yet he could not alienate the Tories. 
Every thing, it seemed, was to be forgiven to youth, rank, 
and genius.* 

"Then came the reaction. Society, capricious in its in- 
dignation as it had been capricious in its fondness, flew into 
a rage with its froward and petted darling. He had been 
worshij)ed with an irrational idolatry. He was persecuted 
with an irrational fury. Much has been written about those 
unhajDpy domestic occurrences which decided the fate of his 
life. Yet nothing is, nothing ever was, positively known to 
the public but this, — that he quarrelled with his lady, and 
that she refused to live Avith him. There have been hints in 
abundance, and shrugs and shakings of the head, and ' Well, 
well, v^e knoio^ and ' We could if we vioukV and '■If we list to 
speak,'' and ' There be that might an they list.'' But we are 
not aware that there is before the world, substantiated by 
credible, or even by tangible evidence, a single fact indica- 
ting that Lord Byron was more to blame thati any other man 
who is on bad terms icith his wife^ 

And after having said how the persons consulted by Lady 
Byron, and who had advised her to separate from her hus- 

* All this is either false, or exaggerated. Religious criticisms were not so 
mild, though he had not in any waj' attacked religion, and the Tories ncvtr forgave 
his attack on the prince rej^pnt, which they made a great noi>e about. 



And its Consequences. 531 

band, formed their opiniou Avithout lieariiig both parties, and 
tliat it would be quite unjust and irrational to pronounce, or 
eveu to form, an opinion on an affair so imperfectly known, 
Mr. Macaulay continues in these words : — 

" We know no spectacle so ridiculous as the British pub- 
lic in one of its periodical fits of morality. In general, elope- 
ments, divorces, and family quarrels, pass with little notice. 
We read the scandal, talk about it for a day, and forget it. 
But once in six or seven years our virtue becomes outrageous. 
We can not siiffer the laws of religion and decency to be 
violated. We must make a stand against vice. We must 
teach libertines that the English j^eople appreciate the im- 
portance of domestic ties. Accordingly some unfortunate 
man, in no respect more depraved than hundreds whose of- 
fenses have been treated with lenity, is singled out as an ex- 
piatory sacrifice. If he has children, they are to be taken 
from him. If he has a profession, he is to be driven from it. 
He is cut by the higher orders, and hissed by the lower. 
He is, in truth, a sort of whipping-boy, by whose vicarious 
agonies all the other transgressors of the same class are, it 
is supposed, sufficiently chastised. We reflect very compla- 
cently on our own severity, and compare with great pride 
the high standard of morals established in England with the 
Parisian laxity. At length our anger is satiated. Our vic- 
tim is ruined and heart-broken, and our virtue goes quietly 
to sleep for seven years more. It is clear that those vices 
w^hich destroy domestic happiness ought to be as much as 
possible repressed. It is equally clear that they can not be 
repressed by penal legislation. It is therefore right and de- 
sirable that public opinion should be directed against them. 
But it should be directed against them uniformly, steadily, 
and temperately ; not by sudden fits and starts. There 
should be one weight and one measure. Decimation is al- 
ways an objectionable mode of punishment. It is the re- 
source of judges too indolent and hasty to investigate facts 
and to discriminate nicely between shades of guilt. It is 
an irrational practice, even when adopted by military tribii- 
nals. When adopted by the tribunal of public opinion, it is 
infinitely more irrational. It is good that a certain portion 
of disgrace should constantly attend on certain bad actions. 



532 Lord Bykon's Marriage 

But it is not good that the offenders should merely have to 
stand the risks of a lottery of infamy, that ninety-nine out of 
every hundred should escape, and that the hundredth, perhaps 
the most innocent of the hundred, should pay for all. We re- 
member to have seen a mob assembled in Lincoln's Inn to hoot 
a gentleman against whom the most oppressive pi'oceeding 
known to the English law was then in progress. He was hoot- 
ed because he had been an unfaithful husband, as if some of 
the most popular men of the age. Lord Nelson for example, 
had not been unfaithful husbands. We remember a still strong- 
er case. Will posterity believe that, in an age in which men 
whose gallantries were universally known, and had been le- 
gally proved, filled some of the highest offices in the state 
and in the army, presided at the meetings of religious and 
benevolent institutions, were the delight of every society, 
and the favorites of the multitude, a crowd of moralists went 
to the theatre, in order to pelt a poor actor for disturbing 
the conjugal felicity of an alderman ? What there was in 
the circumstances either of th*e offender or of the sufferer to 
vindicate the zeal of the audience we could never conceive. 
It has never been supposed that the situation of an actor is 
peculiarly favorable to the rigid virtues, or that an alderman 
enjoys any sj^ecial immunity from injuries such as that which 
on this occasion roused the anger of the public. But such 
is the justice of mankind. In these cases the punishment was 
excessive, but the offense was known and pi'oved. The case 
of Lord Byron was harder. True Jed wood justice was dealt 
out to him. First came the execution, then the investiga- 
tion, and last of all, or rather not at all, the accusation. The 
public, without knowing any thing whatever about the- trans- 
actions in his family, flew into a violent passion with him, 
and proceeded to invent stories which might justify its an- 
ger. Ten or twenty different accounts of the separation, in- 
consistent with each other, with themselves, and with com- 
mon sense, circulated at the same time. What evidence there 
might be for any one of these the virtuous people who re- 
peated them neither know nor cared. For in fact these sto- 
ries were not the causes, but the effects of the public indig- 
nation. They resembled those loathsome slanders which 
Lewis Goldsmith, and other abject libellers of the same clnss. 



And its Consequences. 533 

were in the liubit of publishing about Bonaparte; such as 
that he poisoned a girl with arsenic when he was at the mil- 
itary school, that he hired a grenadier to shoot Desaix at 
Marengo, that he filled St. Cloud with all the pollutions of 
CaprefB, There was a time when anecdotes like these ob- 
tained some credence from persons who, hating the French 
Einjjeror without knowing Avhy, were eager to believe any 
thing which might justify their hatred. 

" Lord Byron fared in the same way. His countrymen 
were in a bad humor with him. His 'writings and his char- 
acter had lost the charm of novelty. He had been guilty 
of the offense which, of all oftenses, is punished most severe- 
ly ; he had been overpraised ; he had excited too warm an 
interest ; and the public, with its iisual justice, chastised him 
for its own folly. The attachments of the multitude bear 
no small resemblance to those of the wanton enchantress in 
the Arabian Tales, who, when the forty days of her fondness 
were over, was not content with dismissing her lovers, but 
condemned them to expiate, in loathsome shapes, and under 
cruel penances, the crime of having once pleased her too well. 

" The obloquy which Byron had to endure was such as 
might Avell have shaken a more constant .mind. The news- 
papers were filled with lampoons. The theatres shook with 
execrations. He was excluded from circles where he liad 
lately been the observed of all observers. All those creeping 
things that riot in the decay of nobler natures hastened to 
their repastj and they were right ; they did after their kind. 
Tt is not every day that the savage envy of aspiring dunces 
is gratified by the agonies of such a spirit, and the degrada- 
tion of such a name. The unhappy man left his country for- 
ever. The howl of contumely followed him across the sea, 
up the Rhine, over the Alps ; it gradually waxed fainter ; it 
died away ; those who had raised it began to ask each other, 
what, after all, was the matter about which they had been 
so clamorous, and wished to invite back the criminal whom 
they had just chased from them. His poetry became more 
popular than it had ever been ; and his complaints were read 
with tears by thousands and tens of thousands who had 
never seen his face." 

These observations of Macaulay are applied by Mr. Dis- 



534 Lord Byron's Marriage 

raeli to Lord Cadurcis, wlio, in his novel called " Venetia," 
is no other than Lord Byron : — 

" Lord Cadurcis," says he, " was the periodical victim, the 
scapegoat of English morality, sent into the wilderness with 
all the crimes and curses of the multitude on his head. 
Lord Cadurcis had certainly committed a great crime, not 
his inti'igue with Lady Monteagle, for that surely was not 
an unprecedented oflense; nor his duel with her husband, 
for after all it was a duel in self-defense : and, at all events, 
divorces and duels, under any circumstances, would scarcely 
have excited or authorized the storm which was now about 
to burst over the late spoiled child of society. But Lord 
Cadurcis had been guilty of the offense which, of all offenses, 
is punished most severely. Lord Cadurcis had been over- 
praised. He had excited too warm an interest ; and the pub- 
lic, with its usual justice, was resolved to chastise him for 
its own folly. There are no fits of caprice so hasty and so 
violent as those of society. Cadurcis, in allusion to his sud- 
den and singular success, had been in the habit of saying to 
his intimates that he ' woke one morning and found himself 
famous.' He might now observe, ' I woke one morning and 
found myself infamous.' Before twenty-four hours had pass- 
ed over bis duel with Lord Monteagle, he found himself 
branded by every journal in London as an unprincipled and 
unparalleled reprobate. The public, without waiting to 
think, or even to inquire after the truth, instantly selected as 
genuine the most false and the most flagrant of the fifty 
libellous narratives that were circulated of the transaction. 
Stories, inconsistent with themselves, were all alike eagerly be- 
lieved, and what evidence there might be for any one of them, 
the virtuous people, by Avhom they w^ere repeated, neither 
knew nor cared. The public, in shoi-t, fell into a passion 
with their daring, and, ashamed of their past idolatry, nothing 
would satisfy them but knocking the divinity on the head." 

And this same Mr. Disraeli, whose testimony is all the 
more precious as coming from a Tory celebrity, after having 
desci'ibed the shameful reception given by the noble House 
to Lord Cadurcis, when he pi'csented himself there aft^r the 
duel, and the atrocious conduct of the stupid populace clam- 
oring against him outside, goes on in these terms : — 



AXD ITS COXSEQUENCES. 535 

"And indeed to witness this young, and noble, and gifted 
creature, but a few days back the idol of the nation, and from 
whom a word, a glance even, was deemed the greatest and 
most gi'atifyiiig distinction — whom all orders, classes, and 
conditions of men had combined to stimulate with multiplied 
adulation, with all the glory and ravishing delights of the 
Avorld, as it were, forced upon him — to see him thus assailed 
with the savage execrations of all those vile things who ex- 
ult in the fall of every thing that is great and the abasement 
of every thing that is noble, was indeed a spectacle which 
might have silenced malice and satisfied envy !" 

To these just appreciations formed by some of Lord By- 
ron's biographers we might add many more ; but the limits 
we have assigned to this work not admitting of it, we will 
only add, as a last testimony, the most severe of all ; him of 
whom Moore said, " that, if one wished to speak against 
Lord Byron, one had only to apply to him," that is, to Lord 
Byron himself 

Li 1820, when Lord Byron was at Ravenna, an article 
from " Blackwood's Magazine," entitled " Observations on 
Don Juan," was sent him. 

It contained such unfounded strictures on his matrimonial 
conduct, that, for once, Lord Byron infringed his rule and 
could not help answering it. The extracts from his defense, 
" if defense it can he called^'' says Moore, " loTiere there has 
never^yet been any definite charge^ loill be read with the liveliest 
interest.'''' Here, then, is a part of these extracts: — 

" It is in vain, says my learned brother, that Lord Byron 
attempts in any way to justify his own behavior with re- 
gard to Lady Byron. 

"And now that he has so openly and audaciously invited 
inquiry and reproach, we do not see any good reason why 
he should not be plainly told so by the voice of his country- 
men." 

"How far the openness of an anonymous poem, and the 
audacity of an imaginary character, Avhich the writer sup- 
poses to be meant for Lady Byron, may be deemed to merit 
this formidable denunciation from their most sweet voices, I 
neither know nor care ; but when he tells me that I. can not 
' in any way justify my own behavior in that affair,' I ac- 



536 LoKD Bykon's Mareiage ^ 

quiesce, because no man can justify himself until he knows 
of what he is accused ; and I have never had — and, God 
knows, my whole desire has ever been to obtain it — any 
specific charge, in a tangible shape, submitted to me by the 
adversary, nor by others, unless the atrocities of public rumor 
and the mysterious silence of the lady's legal advisers may 
be deemed such. 

" But is not the writer content with what has been al- 
ready said and done ? Has not the general voice of his 
countrymen long ago pronounced upon the subject sentence 
without trial, and condemnation without a charge ? Have I 
not been exiled by ostracism, except that the shells which 
proscribed me were anonymous ? Is the writer ignorant of 
the public opinion and the j^ublic conduct upon that occa- 
sion ? If he is, I am not : the public will forget both long- 
before I shall cease to remember either. 

"The man. who is exiled by a faction has the consolation 
of thinking that he is a martyr ; he is upheld by hope and the 
dignity of his cause, real or imaginary : he who Avithdraw^s 
from the pressure of debt may indulge in the thought that 
time and prudence will retrieve his circumstances ; he who is 
condemned by the law as a term to his banishment, or a dream 
of his abbreviation ; or, it may be, the knowdedge or the be- 
lief of some injustice of the law, or of its administration, in liis 
own particular. But he who is outlawed by general opinion, 
without the intervention of hostile politics, illegal judgment, 
or embarrassed circumstances, whether he be innocent or 
guilty, must undergo all the bitterness of exile, without hope, 
without pride, without alleviation. This case was mine. 
Upon what grounds the public founded their opinion lam n.ot 
aware ; but it was general, and it was decisive. Of me or 
of mine they knew little, except that I had written what is 
called poetry, was a nobleman, had married, became a father, 
and was involved in differences Avith my wife and her rela- 
tives, no one knew why, because the persons complaining re- 
fused to state their grievances. The fashionable world was 
divided into parties, mine consisting of a very small minority ; 
the reasonable world was naturally on the stronger side, which 
happened to be the lady's, as was most proper and polite. 
The press was active and scurrilous ; and such was the rage 



And its Consequences. 537 

of the day that tlie unfortunate publication of two copies of 
A^erses rather complimentary than otherwise to the subjects 
of both, was tortured into a species of crime, or constructive 
petty treason. I was accused of every monstrous vice by 
public rumor and private rancor ; my name, which had been 
ar knightly or a noble one since my fathers helped to conquer 
the kingdom for William the Norman, was tainted, I felt 
that, if what was whispered, and muttered, and murmured, 
was true, I was unfit for England ; if false, England was unfit 
for me. I withdrew : but this was not enough. In other 
countries, in Switzerland, in the shadow of the Alps, and by 
the blue depth of the lakes, I was pursued and breathed upon 
by the light. I crossed the mountains, but it was the same ; 
so I went a little farther, and settled myself by the waves of 
the Adriatic, like the stag at bay, who betakes him to the 
waters. 

" If I may judge by the statements of the few friends who 
gathered round me, the outcry of the period to which I allude 
was beyond all precedent, all parallel, even in those cases 
where political motives have sharpened slander and doubled 
enmity." 

One regrets not being able to go on reproducing these fine 
pages written by Lord Byron, but the limits we have assign- 
ed ourselves force the sacrifice. 

And now, after all that has been placed before the reader, 
will he not be curious to learn whether Lord Byron truly 
loved Lady Byron. The answer admits of no doubt. Could 
love exist between two natures so widely dissonant ? But 
then it will be said, why did he marry her ? This question 
may be answered by the simple observation that two-thii"ds 
of the marriages in high life, and indeed in all classes, are con- 
tracted without any love, nor are the parties, therefore, con- 
demned to unhappiness. Still it is as well to recall that not 
only it did not enter into Lord Byron's views to marry for 
love and to satisfy passion, but that he married rather for the 
sake of escaping from the yoke of his passions ! " If I were in 
love I should be jealous," said he, " and then I could not ren- 
der happy the woman I married." " Let her be happy," add- 
ed he, " and then, for my part, I shall also be so." Then again 
we find, "Let them only leave me my mornings free." Last- 

Z 2 



538 Lord Byron's Marriage 

]y, lie wrote in his journal, before marrying Miss Milbanl?, 
and while in correspondence with her, " It is very singular, 
but thei'e is not a spark of love between me and Miss Mil- 
bank." If, then. Miss Milbank married Lord Byron out of 
self-love, and to jDrevent his marrying a young and beautiful 
Irish girl. Lord Byron, on his part, married Miss Milbank 
from motives the most honorable to human nature. It was 
her simple modest air that attracted him and caused his delu- 
sion, and the fame of her virtues quite decided him. As to 
interested motives, they were at most but secondary ; and 
his disinterestedness was all the more meritorious, since the 
embarrassed state of his affairs made him really require mon- 
ey, and Miss Milbank had none at that period. She was an 
only daughter, it is true ; but her parents w^ere still in the 
prime of life, and her uncle. Lord Wentworth, from whom her 
mother was to inherit before herself, might yet live many 
years. His marriage with Miss Milbank was thus not only 
disinterested as regards fortune, but even imprudently gen- 
erous,' for she only brought him a small dowry of £10,000 — a 
mere trifle compared to the life of luxury she was to lead, in 
accordance with their mutual rank.* And these £10,000 
were not only returned by Lord Byron on their separation, 
but generously doubled. 

And now let us hasten to add that although Lord Byron 
was not in love with Miss Milbank, he had no dislike to her 
person, for she was rather pretty and pleasing in appearance. 
Her reputation for moral and intellectual qualities, standing 
on such a high pedestal, Lord Byron naturally conceived that 
esteem might well sufiice to replace tenderness. It is certain 
that, if she had lent herself to it more, and if circumstances 
had only been endurable, their union might have presented 
the same character common to most aristocratic couples in 
England, and that even Lord Byron might have been able to 
act from virtue in default of feeling ; but that little requisite 
for him was wholly wanting. 

His celebrated and touching " Farewell " might be brought 
up as an objection to what we have just advanced. It might 
be said that the word sincere is a proof of love, and insincere 

* See the description of her life made by hiin to Medwiii during his stay at 
Pisa. 



And its Consequences. 589 

a proof of falsehood. Lastly, that in all cases there was a 
want of delicacy and refinement in thns confiding his domes- 
tic troubles to the })ul)lic. Well, all that Avould he ill-found- 
ed, unjust, and contrary to truth. This is the truth of the 
matter. Lord Byion had just been informed that Lady By- 
ron, having sent off by post the letter wherein she confirmed 
all that her father, Sir Kalph, had written, namely, her reso- 
lution of not returning to the conjugal roof, had afterward 
caused this letter to be sought for, and on its being restored^ 
had given way to almost mad demonstrations of joy. Could 
he see aught else in this account save a certainty of the evil 
influences weighing on her, and making her act in contradic- 
tion to her real sentiments ? He pitied her then as a victim, 
thought of all the virtues said to crown Ifer, the illusive be- 
lief in which he was far then from having lost ; he forgot the 
wrongs she had inflicted on him — the spying she had kept 
up around him — the calumnies sjjread against him — the use 
she had made of the letters subtracted from his desk. Yes, 
all was forgotten by his generous heart ; and, according to 
custom, he even went so far as to accuse himself — to see in 
the victim only his wife, the mother of his little Ada ! Un- 
der this excitement he was walking about at night in his sol- 
itary a2"»artments, and suddenly chanced to perceive in some 
corner different things that had belonged to Lady Byron^ 
dresses and other articles of attire. It is well known how 
much the sight of these inanimate mementoes has power to 
call up recollections even to ordinary imaginations. What, 
then, must have been the vividness with which they acted on 
an imagination like Lord Byron's ? His heart softened to- 
ward her, and he recollected that one day, under the influence 
of sorrows which well-nigh robbed him of consciousness, he 
had answered her harshly. Thinking himself in the wrong, 
and full of the anguish that all these reflections and objects 
excited in his breast, he allowed his teai-s to flow, and, snatch- 
ing a pen, wrote down that touching effusion, which some- 
what eased his suffering. 

The next day one of his friends found these beautiful 
verses on his desk; and, judging of Lady Byron's heart and 
that of the public according to his own, he imprudently gave 
them to the world. Thus we can no more doubt Lord By- 



540 Lord Byron's Marriage 

ron's sincerity in writing tliem than we can accuse him of 
publishing them. But what may cause astonishment is that 
they could possibly have been ill-interpreted, as they were ; 
and, above all, that this touching " Farewell " — which made 
Madame de Stael say she would gladly have been unhappy, 
like Lady Byron, to draw it forth — that it should not have 
liad power to rescue her heart from its apathy, and bring her 
to the feet of her husband, or at least into his arms. Let us 
add, in conclusion, that the most atrocious part of this affair, 
and doubtless the most wounding for him, was precisely Lady 
Byron's conduct ; and in this conduct the worst was her cruel 
silence ! 

She has been called, after his words, the moral Clytemnes- 
tra* of her husband. Such a surname is severe; but the re- 
pugnance we feel to condemning a woman can not prevent 
our listening to the voice of justice, which tells us that the 
comparison is still in favor of the guilty one of antiquity. 
For she, driven to crime by fierce passion overpowering rea- 
son, at least only deprived her husband of physical life, and 
in committing the deed exposed herself to all its consequen- 
ces ; v/hile Lady Byron left her husband at the very moment 
that she saw him struggling amid a thousand shoals, in the 
stormy sea of embarrassments created by his marriage, and 
precisely when he more than ever required a friendly, tender, 
and indulgent hand to save him from the tempests of life. 
Besides, she shut herself up in silence a thousand times more 
cruel than Clytemnestra's poniard, that only killed the body; 
whereas Lady Byron's silence was destined to kill the soul, 
and such a soul ! leaving the door open to calumny, and mak- 
ing it to be supposed that her silence was magnanimity des- 
tined to cover over frightful wrongs, perhaps even depravity. 
In vain did he, feeling his conscience at ease, implore some 
inquiry and examination. She refused, and the only favor 
she granted was to send him, one fine day, two persons to see 
Avhether he were not mad. Happily Lord Byron only dis- 
covered at a later period the purport of this strange visit. 

In vain did Lord Byron's friend, the companion of all his 
travels, throAV himself at Lady Byron's feet, imploring her to 

* Lord BjTon, in lines wrung from him hy angiiisli and anger, says the mnnd 
Cfytemnestra "fthy lord. 



And its Consequences. 541 

give over this fatal silence. The only reply she deigned was, 
that she had thought him mad ! 

And why, then, had she believed him mad ? Because she, 
a methodical inflexible woman, with that unbendingness 
which a profound moralist calls the worship rendered to 
pride by a feelingless soul ; — because she could not under- 
stand the possibility of tastes and habits diiFerent to those 
of ordinary routine, or of her own starched life ! Not to be 
hungry when she was — not to sleep at night, but to write 
while she was sleeping, and to sleep when she was up — in 
short, to gratify the requirements of material and intellect- 
ual life at hours diftei-ent to hers : — all that was not merely 
annoying for her, but it must be 'tnadness! or if not, it be- 
tokened depravity that she could neither submit to nor tol- 
erate without perilling her own morality ! 

Such was the grand secret of the cruel silence which ex- 
posed Lord Byron to the most malignant interpretations — to 
all the calumny and revenge of his enemies. 

She was perhaps the only woman in the world so strange- 
ly organized — the only one, perhaps, capable of not feeling 
happy and proud at belonging to a man superior to the rest 
of humanity ! and fatally was it decreed that this woman 
alo7ie of her species should be Lord Byron's Avife ! 

Befoi'e closing this chapter it remains for us to examine 
if it be true, as several of his biographers have pretended, 
that he wished to be reunited to his wife. We must here 
declare that Lord Byron's intention, in the last years of his 
life, was, on the contrary, not to see Lady Byron again. This 
is what he wrote from Ravenna, to Moore, in June, 1820 : — 

" I have received a Parisian letter from W. W , which 

I prefer answering through you, as that worthy says he is ^ 
occasional visitor of yours. In November last he wrote to 
me a well-meaning letter, stating for some reasons of his own, 
his belief that a reunion might be effected between Lady By- 
ron and myself 

" To this I answered as usual ; and he sent me a second 
letter, repeating his notions, which letter I have never an- 
swered, having had a thousand other things to think of 
He now writes as if he believed that he had offended me 
by touching on the topic ; and I wish you to assure him that 



542 Lord Byron's Marriage 

I am not at all so, but on the contrary, obliged by his good- 
nature. At the same time acquaint him the thing is impos- 
sible. You knov) this as well as I, and there let it encV 

A year later, at Pisa, he again said to M " that he 

never xoould have been reunited to Lady Byron ; that the time 
for such a possibility was j^assed, and he had made quite suf- 
ficient advances.''' 

Let us add likewise that during the last period of his 
stay at Genoa, a jjerson whose acquaintance he had just 
made, thought fitting, for several reasons and even by way 
of winning golden opinions among a certain set in England, 
to insist on this matter with Lord Byron. 

In order to succeed, this person represented Lady Byron 
as a victim, telling him she was very ill physically and mor- 
ally, and declaring the secret cause to be, no doubt, grief at 
her separation from him and dread of his asserting his rights 
over Ada. 

Lord Byron, kind and impressionable as he was, may have 
been moved at this ; but assuredly his resolution of not be- 
ing reunited to Lady Byron was not shaken. His only reply 
was to show me a letter he had written some little time be- 
fore : — 

" The letter I inclose," said he, " may helj) to explain my 

sentiments I was perfectly sincere when I Avrote it, 

and am so still. But it is difficult for me to withstand the 
thousand provocations on that subject, which both friends 
and foes have for seven years been throwing in the way of 
a man whose feelings were once quick, and whose temper 
was never patient. But 'returning were as tedious as go 
o'er.' I feel this as much as ever Macbeth did ; and it is a 
di'eary sensation, which at least avenges the real or imagi- 
nary wrongs of one of the two unfortunate persons whom it 
concerns." 

Here is the letter he wrote from Pisa to Lady Byron : — 

" I have to acknowledge the receipt of Ada's hair, which 
is very soft and pretty, and nearly as dark already as mine 
was at twelve years old, if I may judge from what I recollect 
of some in Augusta's possession, taken at that age. But it 
don't curl, perhaps from its being let groAv. 

" I also thank you for the inscription of the date and name. 



And its Consequences. 543 

and I Avill tell you why : I believe tliat they are the only 
two or three words of your handwriting in my possession. 
P^'or your letters I returned, and except the two words, or 
rather the one word, ' household,' written twice in an old ac- 
count-book, I have no other. I burnt your last note for two 
reasons : — firstly, it was written in a style not very agree- 
able ; and, secondly, I wished to take your word without 
documents, which are the worldly resources of suspicious 
people. 

" I suppose that this note will reach you somewhere about 
Ada's birthday — the 10th of December, I believe. She will 
then be six, so that in about twelve more I shall have some 
chance of meeting her ; perhaps sooner, if I am obliged to 
go to England by business or otherwise. Recollect, how- 
ever, one thing, either in distance or nearness : every day 
which keeps us asunder should, after so long a period, rather 
soften our mutual feelings, which must always have one ral- 
lying-point as long as our child exists, which I presume we 
both hope will be long after either of her parents. 

"The time which has elapsed since the separation has 
been considerably more than the whole brief period of our 
iniion, and the not much longer one of our prior acquaintance. 
We both made a bitter mistake ; but now it is over, and ir- 
revocably so. For at thirty-three on my part, and a few 
years less on yours, though it is no very extended period of 
life, still it is one when the habits and thoughts are generally 
so formed as to admit of no modification ; and as we could 
not agree when younger, we should with difficulty do so 
now. 

" I say all this, because I own to you that, notwithstand- 
ing every thing, I considered our reunion as not impossible 
for more than a year after the separation; but then I gave 
up the hope entirely and forever. But this very impossi- 
bility of reunion seems to me, at least, a reason why, on all 
the few points of discussion which can arise between us, we 
should preserve the courtesies of life, and as much of its kind- 
ness as people who are never to meet may jireserve, perhaps 
more easily than nearer connections. For my own part, I am 
violent, but not malignant ; for only fresh provocations can 
awaken my resentment. To you, Avho are colder and more 



544 Lord Byron's Marriage. 

concentrated, I would just hint that you may sometimes mis- 
take the depth of a cold anger for dignity, and a worse feel- 
ing for duty. I assure you that I bear you now (whatever I 
may have done) no resentment whatever. Remember that 
if you have injured me in aught, this forgiveness is somethhig ; 
and that if I have injured you, it is something more still, if it 
be true, as moralists say, that the most offending are the least 
forgiving. 

" Whether the offense has been solely on my side or recip- 
rocal, or on yours chiefly, I have ceased to reflect upon any 
but two things, viz., that you are the mother of my child, 
and that we shall never meet again. I think if you also con- 
sider the two corresponding points with reference to myself, 
it will be better for all three. Yours ever, 

" Noel Byron." 

This letter, though never sent, requires no further proofs. 
It can now be understood, although the conti'ary has been 
said, that Lord Byron's resolution never again to unite with 
Lady Byron was irrevocable ; but that, however, a reconcili- 
ation would have pleased him, on account of his daughter, 
and because no feeling of hatred could tind room in his great 
soul. 



LoKD JiYKOis's Gaykty, Etc. 545 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

LOKD BYRON'S GAYETY AND MELANCHOLY. 

HIS GAYETY. 

A GREAT deal has been said about Byron's melancholy. 
His gayety has also been spoken of. As usual, all the judg- 
ments pronounced have been more or less false. His temper- 
ament is just as little known as his disposition, when people 
affect to judge him in an exclusive way. 

Let me, then, be permitted in this instance also to re-estab- 
lish truth on its only sure basis, namely, facts. 

Lord Byron was so often gay that several of his biogra- 
phers had thought themselves justified in asserting that gay- 
ety and not melancholy predominated in his nature. Even 
Mr. Gait, who only knew him at that period of his life when 
melancholy certainly predominated, nevertheless uses these 
expressions : — " Singular as it may seem, the poem itself 
(' Beppo,' his first essay of facetious poetry) has a stronger 
tone of gayety than his graver works have of melancholy, 
commonly believed to have been (I think unjustly) the pre- 
dominant trait in his character."* 

Many others have said the same thing. The truth is, that 
if by giving way to I'eflection — which was a necessity of his 
genius — and through circumstances — which were a fatality of 
his destiny — he has shown himself melancholy in his writings 
and very often in his dispositions, it is no less certain that by 
temperament and taste, by the activity, penetration, and 
complex character of his mind, he very often showed himself 
to be extremely gay. No one better than he seized upon 
the absurd and ridiculous side of things or more easily found 
cause for laughter. His gayety — the result of a frank, open, 
volatile nature, full of varying moods — was easily excited by 
any absurdities, ridiculous pretensions, or witty sallies ; and 

* Gait, p. 218. 



546 L o u 1) B Y R o X ' s 

then he became so expansive and charming, body and soul 
with him both seemed to laugh in such unison, that it was 
impossible not to catcli the contagion ; but his laughter was 
ever devoid of malice. Slight defects of harmony in things, 
or proportion, or mutual relation, easily gave rise to mirthful 
sensations in him. Being full of admiration for the beauti- 
ful, and having, moreover, a great sense of mutual fitness, 
and much activity of mind, it was with extraordinary and in- 
stinctive promptitude that he seized upon the contradictory 
relations existing between objects, and indeed on all showing 
a voluntary absence of order and beauty in the conduct of 
free reasonable beings. His laughter was then quite as 
a?sthetical as it was innocent. And even if it were not ad- 
mitted, as it is by all philosophical moralists, that no sort of 
personal calculation enters into this entirely spontaneous 
emotion, no sentiment of superiority over the being we are 
laughing at — for selfishness and laughter never coexist — if it 
were possible, I say, to doubt all this, even then to see Lord 
Byron laugh would have sufficed to give the right conviction. 
For truly his mirth was a charming thing ; the very air sur- 
rounding him appeai'ed to laugh. 

Then Avould his soul, that often required to emerge from 
its deep reflections, unbend itself, and alternately disport or 
repose in utter self abandonment. It dismissed thought, as 
it Avere, in order to become a child again ; to deliver itself 
over to all the caprices of those myriad changeful fugitive 
impressions that course through the brain at moments of 
excitement. 

Moore often recurs to Byron's liveliness. " Nothing, in- 
deed, could be more amusing and delightful It was 

like the bursting gayety of a boy let loose from school, and 
seemed as if there was no extent of fun or tricks of which he 
was not capable." When Moore visited him at Mira, in the 
autumn of 1812, and accompanied him to Venice, the former 
expressed himself as follows in his memorandum of that oc- 
casion : — 

" As we proceeded across the lagoon in his gondola the 
sun was just setting, and it was an evening such as Romance 
would have chosen for a first sight of Venice, rising ' with her 
tiara of bright towers' above the wave ; while to complete, as 



Gayety and melancholy, oiT 

miglit be imagined, the solemn interest of the scene, I behold 
it in company with him avIio had lately given a new life to 
its glories, and snng of that fjiir City of the Sea thus grand- 

' 1 stood in Venice, on the Bridge of Sighs ; 
A jiLilace and a ])rison on each liand : 
I saw from out the wave her structures rise 
As from the stroke of the enchanter's wand: 
A thousand years their cloudy wings expand 
Around me, and a dying Glory smiles 
O'er the far times, when many a sutyect land 
Look'd to the winged Lion's marble piles, 
Where Venice sat in state, throned on her hundred isles !' 

" But whatever emotions the first sight of such a scene 
might, under other circumstances, have inspired me with, the 
mood of mind in which I now viewed it was altogether the 
reverse of what might have been expected. The exuberant 
gayety of my companion, and the recollections — any thing 
but romantic — into which our conversation wandei'ed, put 
at once completely to flight all poetical and historical associ- 
ations ; and our course was, I am almost ashamed to say, one 
of uninterrupted merriment and laughter till we found our- 
selves at the steps of my friend's palazzo on the Grand Canal. 
All that ever happened, of gay or ridiculous, during our Lon- 
don life together ; his scrapes and my lecturings ; our joint 
adventures with the Bores and Blues, the two great enemies, 
as he always called them, of London hTlppiness ; our joyous 
nights together at Walter's, Kinnaird's, etc. ; and that ' d — d 
supper of Rancliffe's, which ought to have been a dinner ;' 
all was passed rapidly in review between vis, and with a flow 
of humor and hilarity on his side of which it would have been 
difficult for persons even far graver than even I can pretend 
to be, not to have caught the contagion." 

Lord Byron was especially prOne to mirth and fun in the 
society of those he liked ; to jest and laugh with any one was 
a great proof of his sympathy for them. When he wrote to 
absent dear ones, he would constantly say, " I have many 
things to tell you for us to laugh over together." Li several 

letters addressed from Greece to Madame G , he informs 

her of these treasures of mirth, held in reserve for the day of 
meeting, that they might laugh together. Lord Byron rare- 
ly used flattering language to those he loved. It was rather 



548 Lord Byron's 

by looks than by words that he expressed his feelings and 
his approbation. His delight with intimates was to bring- 
out strongly their defects, as well as their qualities and mer- 
its, by dint of jests, clever innuendo, and charming sallies 
of humor. The promptitude with Avhich he discovered the 
slightest weakness, the faintest symj^tom of exaggeration or 
atfectation, can hardly be credited. It might almost be said 
that the persons on whom he bestowed affection became trans- 
parent for him, that he dived into their thoughts and feelings. 

It was this state of mind especially that gave rise to those 
sallies of wit which formed such a striking feature of his in- 
telligence. Then his conversation really became quite daz- 
zling. In his glowing language all objects assumed unfore- 
seen and picturesque aspects. New and striking thoughts 
followed from him in rapid succession, and the flame of his 
genius lighted up as if winged with wildfire. Those who 
have not known him at these moments can foi'm no idea of 
what it was from his works. For, in the silence of his study, 
when, pen in hand, he was working out his grand conceptions, 
the lightning sti'okes lost much of their brilliant intensity ; 
and although we find, especially in " Don Juan " and " Beppo," 
delightful pages of rich comic humor, only those who knew 
him can judge how superior still his conversation was. But 
in this gay exercise of his faculties, which was to him a real 
enjoyment in all his- sallies or even in his railleries, not one 
iota of malice could be traced — unless we call by that name 
the amusement springing from mirth and wit indulged. 
Even if his shafts were finely pointed, they were at the same 
time so inoffensive that the most susceptible could not be 
woimded. 

The great pleasure he took in jesting appears to have be- 
longed to his organization; for it accompanied him through- 
out life. We have already seen what his nurses, his precept- 
ors, and the friends of his childhood said on this subject. We 
have observed his sympathy for the old cup-bearer of his 
family mansion ; the pleasantries expended on the quack La- 
vander, who was always promising to cure his foot, and never 
did; the jesting tone of his boyish correspondence ; afterward 
the masqueradings that took place at Newstead Abbey ; then 
again his gay doings with Moore and Rogers in London ; the 



Gayety and Melancholy. 549 

jests pervading the correspondence of his maturer years ; 
then their concentration in " Beppo " and " Don Juan ;" and 
finally, how often, even in Greece, when he was already un- 
well at Missolonghi, he could not help giving way to pleas- 
antry and childish play to such a degree that good Dr. Ken- 
nedy, when he wished to convert him to his somewhat intol- 
erant orthodoxy at Cephalonia, found one of the obstacles to 
consist in the difficulty of keeping Lord Byron serious. 

" He was fond," says the doctor, " of saying smart and wit- 
ty things, and never allowed an opportunity of punning to 
escape him He generally showed high spirits and hi- 
larity I have heard him say several witty things ; 

but as I was always anxious to keep him grave and present 
important subjects for his consideration, after allowing the 
laugh to pass I again endeavored to resume the seriousness 
of the conversation, while his lordship constantly did the 
same." 

And then Kennedy adds : — " My impression from them 
was, that they were unworthy a man of his accomplishments : 
I mean the desire of jesting."* 

These words well characterize the honest Methodist, who, 
like many other good and noble minds, yet could not under- 
stand fun. This incapability is also sometimes the case with 
persons of a sour, ill-uatured, or susceptible disposition, whose 
excessive vanity is shocked at all simple, innocent explosions 
of gayety and pleasantry. f Colonel Stanhope, who knew 
Lord Byron at the same pex'iod, and who was not a Metho- 
dist, but who from other causes could not appreciate the 
poet's vivacious Avit, said : — 

" The mind of Lord Byron was like a volcano, full of fire 
and wrath, sometimes calm, often dazzling and i^layful. . . . 
As a companion," he adds, " no one could be more amusing 
than Lord Byron ; he had neither pedantry nor affectation 
about him, but was natural and playful as a boy. His con- 
versation resembled a stream ; sometimes smooth, sometimes 
rapid, and sometimes rushing down in cataracts. It was a 
mixture of philosophy and slang, of every thing, — like his 
' Don Juan.' He was a patient, and in general a very atten- 
tive, listener. When, however, he did engage with earnest- 

* Kennedy, p. 301. -j- See Gait, with rp^anl to F^unt. 



550 Lord Byron's 

ness in conversation, his ideas succeeded each other with such 
uncommon rapidity that he could not control them. They 
burst from him impetuously ; and although he both attended 
to and noticed the i-emarks of others, yet he did not allow 
these to check his discourse for an instant." 

" Tliere was usually," writes Coun^ Gamba, his friend and 
companion in Greece, in his interesting work, entitled " Last 
Travels of Lord Byron in Greece," " a liveliness of spiiit and 
a tendency to joke, even at times of great danger, when other 
men would have become serious and pre-occupied. This dis- 
position of mind gave him a kind of air of frankness and sin- 
cerity which was quite irresistible with those persons even 
who were most prejudiced against him." 

This allusion of Count Gamba refers to the letter which 
Byron wrote in the midst of the Suliotes, among whom he had 
taken refuge during the storm and to escape the Turks. 

" If any thing," writes Lord Byron, on the point of em- 
barking for Missolonghi, and in his last letter to Moore, " if 
any thing in the way of fever, fatigue, famine, or otherwise, 
should cut short the middle age of a brother warbler, like 
Garcilasso de la Vega, I pray you remember me in ' your 
smiles and wine.' 

" I have hopes that the cause will triumph ; but, whether 
it does or no, still ' honor must be minded as strictly as a milk 
diet.' I trust to observe both. Byeon." 

" It is matter of history," continues Count Gamba, " that 
Lord Byron, in consequence of vexations to which he was 
ever a victim, added to the rigorous diet which he followed 
(he only fed upon vegetables and green tea, to show that he 
could live as frugally as a Greek soldier), and from the im- 
possibility which he foimd to take any exercise at Missolonghi, 
had a nervous fit, Avhieh deprived him of the power of speech 
and alarmed all liis friends and acquaintances. When the 
crisis had worn oif, he merely laughed over it." 

" Even at Missolonghi," says Parry, who knew him there 
only in the midst of troubles and vexations of every descrip- 
tion and quite at the close of his life, " he loved to jest in 
words and actions. These pleasantries lightened his spirits, 
and prevejited him from dwelling on disagreeable thoughts." 



Gayety and Melancholy. 551 

Perhaps tliis disposition of character was the result of liis 
Freueli origin, for it is scarcely known or even appreciated 
in England. 

" Yet," exclaims the greatest-minded woman of our day 
(Madame G. Sand), " it is that disposition which forms the 
charm of every delicate intimacy, and which often prevents 
our committing many follies and stupidities. 

" To look for the ridiculous side of things is to discover their 
weakness. To laugh at the dangers in the midst of which 
we find ourselves is to get accustomed to brave them ; like the 
French, who go into action with a laugh and a song. To 
quiz a friend is often to save him from a weakness in which 
our pity might perhaps have allowed him to linger. To laugh 
at one's self is to preserve one's self from the effects of an ex- 
aggerated self-love. I have noticed that the people who nev- 
er joke are gifted with a childish and insupportable vanity." 

Nevertheless, there are high and noble natures that never 
laugh, and arc incapable of understanding the pleasures of 
gayety. But minds like these have some vacuum ; they cer- 
tainly lack what is called wit. 

Lord Byron's gayety, full of dazzling wit and varied tints, 
like his other faculties, never went beyond the limits befit- 
ting its exercise in a beautiful soul. As much as the truly 
ridiculous, that which a great writer has defined, " the strength, 
small or great, of a free being, out of proportion vnth its end^'' 
— as much, I say, as the truly ridiculous attracted and 
amused him, just as much did grave, moral, and physical 
disorders, produced by corruption of body or soul, sadden 
and repel his nature, so full of harmony. He could never 
laugh at these latter. The grave disorders of soul that exist 
in free beings, and that are therefore voluntary, raised sad- 
ness, anger, or indignation in him, according to the degree 
of vice or disorder. We need seek no other origin for his 
bitterest satires in verse and prose. Great ugliness and phys- 
ical defects certainly inspired him with great disgust, con- 
sequent upon Tils passion for the beautiful ; but, at the same 
time, involuntary misfortunes excited his liveliest compas- 
sion, often testified by the most generous deeds. 

We know, for instance, that Lord Byron had a defect in 
one of his feet, but a defect so slight — althouiih it has been 



552 Lord Byron's 

greatly exaggerated — that people have never been able to 
say in which of the two feet it did exist. Nor did it in any 
Avay diminish the grace and activity all his movements dis- 
played. If its existence were painful for him, that must have 
been because his sense of harmony looked upon this defect 
as detrimental to the perfection of his physical beauty. But 
whatever may have been the cause of this sensibility, it suf- 
ficed in any case to make him feel a generous compassion 
for all those afflicted with any defect analogous to his OAvn. 
Lord Harrington, then Colonel Stanhope, says : — 

" Contrary to what we observe in most people. Lord By- 
ron, who was always very sensitive to the sufferings of oth- 
ers, showed greatest sympathy for those who had any imper- 
fection akin to his own." At Ravenna, his favorite beggar 
limped. And on him Lord Byron bestowed the privilege of 
picking up all the largest coins struck down by his dexterous 
pistol-shots in the forest of pines. We have said he never 
laughed at any involuntary defect, not even at a person fall- 
ing (as is so often the case), for fear it might have been 
caused by bodily weakness, neither did he ridicule any of 
the weaknesses or shortcomings of intelligence. 

He did not laugh at a bad poet on account of his bad 
verses. When he was at Pisa, an Irishman there w^as en- 
gaged in translating the " Divine Comedy." The translation 
was very heavy and faulty ; but the translator was most en- 
thusiastic about the great poet, and absolutely lived on the 
hope of getting his work published. All the English at Pisa, 
including the kind Shelley, were turning him into ridicule. 
Lord Byron alone would not join in the laugh. T 's sin- 
cerity won for him grace and compassion. Indeed Lord By- 
ron did still more ; for he wrote and entreated Murray to 
publish the work, so as to give the poor poet this consolation. 
Not content with that step, he wrote to Moore to beg Jef- 
frey not to criticise him, undertaking himself to ask Giftbrd 
the same thing, through Murray. "Perhaps they might 
speak of the commentaries without touching 'on the text," 
said he ; and then he added with his usual pleasantry, 
" However, we must not trust to it. Those dogs! the text is 
too tempting.''''* 

* :Moor". Lf^ttor IRS. 



Gayety and Melancholy. 553 

Nor did he laugh at exaggerated devotion, even if it were 
extravagant or superstitious, provided he thought it sincere. 
Countess G , paternal aunt of Countess G , the great- 
est beauty of Romagna in 1800, had fallen into such extreme 
mystical devotion, through the brutal jealousy of her hus- 
band, that she died in the odor of sanctity. This lady wrote 

to her brother, Count G , at Genoa, saying how happy 

she was, and giving no end of praise to " the good Jesuit 
Fathers," and speaking of her devotion to St. Teresa. Ma- 
dame G , having sent one of these letters to Lord Byron, 

he answered : " I consider all that as very respectable, and, 
moreover, enviable. The aunt is right ; I wish I could love 
the good fathers and St. Teresa. After all, what does this 
devotee of St. Teresa, this friend of the good Jesuit Fathers, 
want ? Happiness ; and she has found it ! What else are 
we seeking for ?" 

We have already seen elsewhere* that Lord Byron never, 
at any period of his life, laughed at religion or its sincere 
votaries, whatever might be their creed of belief Provided 
their errors came from the heart, they commanded his re- 
spect. Dallas himself, in reference to the skeptical stanzas 
of his twenty-second year, can not help rendering him justice. 

" I have not noticed," says he, " a spirit of mockery in 
you ; and you have the little-known art of not wishing that 
others should be of your opinion in matters of religious be- 
lief I am less disinterested ; I have the greatest desire, nay, 
even a great hope, to see you some day believe as I do." 
We have seen, also, what Kennedy said of him in Greece.f 
Dr. Millingen beai's the same testimony : — 

" During the whole of the time that I visited him, I never 
heard him utter a single word of contempt for the Christian 
religion. On the contrary, he used often to say, that nothing 
could be more reprehensible than to turn into ridicule those 
who believed in it, since in this strange world it is equally 
difficult to arrive at knowing what one is or is not to believe ; 
and since many freethinkers teach doctrines which are as 
much beyond the reach of human comprehension as the 
mysteries of the revelation itself" 

When, by habit of looking at serious things from their ab- 

* See chapter on " Religion." f Ibid. 

A A 



554 Lord Byron's 

surd and ridiculous side, he feared he had done the same with 
regard to some religious ceremony, he at once hastened to 
explain himself. Thus he writes to Moore from Pisa : — 

" I am afraid that this sounds flippant, but I don't mean 
it to be so ; only my turn of mind is so given to taking things 
in the absurd point of view, that it breaks out in spite of me 
every now and then. Still, I do assure you that I am a very 
good Christian. Whether you believe me in this, I do not 
know." 

But much as he respected sincere religious feelings, equally 
did he detest that hypocrisy which desjiises in secret the 
idol it adores in public. Even at the transition period of 
what has been called his skepticism, it was extremely dis- 
tasteful to him to speak against religion, to despise and mock 
even the hollow worship practiced outwardly from human 
motives *and personal interest. In Livadia at this time he 
met with a Greek bishop, whose actions were quite at vari- 
ance with his language. How great the antipathy Lord 
Byron conceived for him, may be seen by the notes appended 
to the first and second cantos of " Childe Harold." For the 
Pharisees of our days he felt all the anger due to whited 
sepulchres. No, certainly, it was not true virtue in general, 
nor any one virtue in particular, that he laughed at some- 
times; nor was it friendship, or love, or religion, or any 
truly respectable sentiment that ever excited his mirth. He 
only ridiculed semblances, vain appearances, when those who 
paraded them did so from personal interest. Lord Byron 
knew too well, by experience, that many virtues admired 
and set forth as such do but wear a mask in reality ; and he 
thought it useful for society to divest them of it, and show 
the hidden visage. Why should he have shown any consid- 
eration for the virtue that patronizes charity-balls, in order to 
acquire the right of violating, with impunity, the duties of a 
Christian wife ? or that other female virtue which weighs 
itself in the balance with the privilege of directing Alraacks? 
or that, wishing to unite the advantages of modesty with the 
gratification of passion ? Li short, why should he have 
shown consideration for persons whose merit consists in never 
allowing themselves to he seen as they are 9 He was very dis- 
respectful, likewise, toward certain friendships that he knew 



Gayety and Melancholy. 555 

by experience to be full of wordy counsel, but finding nothing 
to say in the way of consolation or defense. This peculiar 
variety of friendship had made him suffer greatly. In his 
serious poems he calls it " tlie loss of his illusions;^^ and ex- 
presses himself with misanthropical indignation, or with a 
bleeding heart. But, returning to a milder philosophy, he 
ended by smiling and jesting at it, in words like these : — 

" Look'd sjrave and pale to see her friend's fragility, 
For which most friends resei"ve their sensibility." 

Seriously ; was he bound to any great tenderness toward 
such friendship as that ? And does it not suffice to set Lord 
Byron right with true friendship to hear him say, after having 
laughed about false friends : — 

" But this is not my maxim : had it been, 

Some heart-aches had been spared me: yet I care not — 

I would not be a tortoise in his screen 

Of stubborn shell, which waves and weather wear not. 

'Tis better, on the whole, to have felt and seen 
That which humanity maj' bear, or bear not: 

'Twill teach discernment to the sensitive. 

And not to pour their ocean in a sieve."* 

m 

Friendship was so necessary to him that he wrote to Moore, 
on the eve of his marriage, 15th of October, 1814 : 

" An' there were any thing in marriage that would make a 
difference between my friends and me, particularly in your 
case, I would none on't." 

People should read all he said of Lord Clare and Moore, 
and see with Avhat almost jealous susceptibility he guarded 
the title of friend,f before they can understand the value he 
attached to true friendship. But among many of the privileges 
he conceded to friendship, duties also held their place. 

And if we pass from friendship to love, could he really 
bestow such respect on the loves of a Lady Adeline, or of 
those who, he said, " embrace you to-day, thinking of the 
novel they will write to-morrow." His ideal of true love has 
been noticed ; and he became impatient when he saw it con- 
founded with any thing else. At twenty-two years of age 
he wrote to his young friend, the Rev. Mr. Harness : — 

" I told you the fate of B and H in my last. So 

* "Don Juan," canto xiv. f See Lord Byron"s letter to Mrs. Shelley. 



556 Lord Byron's 

much for these sentimentfilists, who console themselves in 
their stews for the loss — the never-to-be-recovered loss — the 
despair of the refined attachment of a couple of drabs ! You 
censure my life, Harness : when I compare myself with these 
men, my elders and my betters, I really begin to conceive 
myself a monument of prudence — a walking statue — with- 
out feeling or failing ; and yet the world in general hath 
given me a proiid pre-eminence over them in profligacy. 
Yet I like the men, and, God knows, ought not to condemn 
their aberrations. But I own I feel provoked when they dig- 
nify all this by the name of love — romantic attachments for 
things marketable for a dollar !" 

Yes, Lord Byron never did respect the love that can be 
bartered for dollars. And afterward, when irritation had 
given way to a milder and more tolerant philosophy, he took 
the liberty of laughing at it, both in prose and verse. It 
may however, be urged against him, that he sometimes turned 
into ridicule even his deepest sentiments ; and Moore remarks 
this as a defeat, apropos of the jesting tone he assumed once 
at Bologna, when writing to Hoppner. But Moore forgets 
to say, Uiat while his heart called him to Ravenna, he was 
speaking against the counsels given by Hoppner, who, in 
order to deter him from this visit, for reasons previously 
cited,* had made the darkest prognostications regai-ding its 
consequence ; and though he could not shake Lord Byron's 
determination, it is very probq,ble that he may have upset 
his imagination. Thus he was tiying to show himself ready 
for every thing. Such pleasantries are like the song of one 
who is alarmed in the dark. Moreover, from his manner of 
judging human nature, and his lively sense of the ridiculous, 
Lord Byron was well aware that a light tone is alone admis- 
sible for speaking to others of a love they do not share, and 
more especially when they disapprove of it. He felt that 
the gayety of Ovid and the gallantry of Horace are better 
suited to indifferent people than Petrarch's high-flown phrases 
and sentimentalities, or Werther's despair. It was through 
this same nice perception of the sentiments entertained by 
indifierent individuals that he sometimes adopted a light, 
playful tone in conversation, or in his correspondence, when 

* See his " Life in Italy." 



Gayety and Melancholy. 557 

speaking of friendsliip, devoted feelings of any kind, and a 
host of sentiments very serious and deep within his own 
heart, but which he believed less calculated to interest others. 
And if sometimes his singular penetration of the human heart 
called forth mockery, it sprang more frequently from seeing 
fine sentiments put fQrth in flagrant contradiction with con- 
duct, or morality looked upon as a mere thing of outward 
decorum, speedily to be set aside, if once the actors were re- 
moved from the eyes of the world. He would not grant his 
esteem to fine sentiments expressed by writers who could 
be bribed; to the promises of heroes who noisily enroll 
combatants, while themselves remaining safe by their fire- 
side ; or to the generosity that displays itself from a balcony. 
And, assuredly, he had a right to be particular in his estimate 
of this latter virtue, which he himself always practiced 
secretly, and in the shade. He would not consent to its be- 
ing bartered, nor that people should have the honor of it 
. without any sacrifice on their part. Thus he replied to 
Moore, who was in an ecstasy about the generosity of Lord 
some one : — " I shall believe all that when you prove to me 
that there is no advantage in openly helping a man like you." 
With wonderful, and, I might almost say, supernatural per- 
spicacity, Lord Byron penetrated into the arcana of souls, 
and did not come out thence with a very good opinion of 
what he had seen. But, kind as he was, he did not like to 
probe too deeply the motives of others, especially as a rule 
of action for himself As he says in his admirable satire of 
" Don Juan,"— 

" 'Tis sad to buri'ow deep to roots of things, 
So much are they besmeared with earth." 

Lastly, his mockeries were all directed against the vice he 
most abhorred — hypocrisy ; for he looked upon that as a gan- 
grene to the soul, the cause of most of the evils that afflict so- 
ciety, and certainly of all his own misfortunes. As long as 
he was obliged to bear it, under the depressing influence of 
England's misty atmosphere, he felt by turns saddened and 
indignant. But when he reached Italy, his soul caught the 
bright rays that emanate from a southern sky, and he prefer- 
red to combat hypocrisy with the lighter weapons of pleas- 
antry. But whichsoever arm he wielded, he always pursued 



558 Lord Byron's 

the enemy remorselessly, following into every fastness, of 
which none knew better than himself each winding and each 
resource. For hypocrisy had been the bane of his life ; it had 
rendered useless for happiness that combination he possessed 
of Heaven's choicest gifts ; the plenitude of affections, num- 
berless qualities most charming in domestic life, for he had 
been exiled from the family circle. Hypocrisy had forced 
him to despise a country also that could act toward him like 
an unnatural parent, rather than a true mother, wounding 
him with calumnies, and obstinately depreciating him, solely 
because she allowed hypocrisy to reign on her soil. Such, 
then, were the virtues which he permitted himself to mock at. 

" TFe must not make out a ridicule where none exists,''^ says 
La Bruyere ; but it is well to see that which has a being, and 
to draw it forth gracefully, in a manner that may both please 
and instruct. 

As to true, holy, pure, undeniable virtues, no one more 
than he admired and respected them. "Any trait of virtue 
or courage," says one of his biographers, " caused him deep 
emotion, and would draw tears from his eyes, provided al- 
ways he were convinced that it had not been actuated by a 
desire of shining or producing effect." 

"A generous action," says another, " the remembrance of 
patriotism, personal sacrifice, disinterestedness, would cause in 
him the most sublime emotions, the most brilliant thoughts." 
The more his ophiion as to the rarity of virtue appeared to 
him well-founded, the more did he render homage when he met 
with it. The more he felt the difliculty of overcoming pas- 
ions, the more did a victory gained over them excite his ad- 
miration. 

" Pray make my respects to Mrs. Hoppner, and assure her 
of my unalterable reverence for the singular goodness of 
her disposition, which is not without its reward even in 
this world. P^'or those who are no great believers in human 
virtues would discover enough in her to give them a better 
opinion of their fellow-creatures, and — what is still more dif- 
ficult — of themselves, as being of the same species, however 
inferior in approaching its nobler models," 

At Coppet he was more touched by the conjugal affection 
of the young Duchesse de Broglie for her husband, than he 



Gayety and Melancholy. 559 

was attracted by the genius even of her mother, Madame de 
Stael, " Notliing," says he in his memoranda, " was moi-e 
agreeable than to see the manifestation of domestic tender- 
ness in this young woman." When he received at Pisa the 
posthumous message sent by a beautiful, angelic young creat- 
ure, who had caught a glimpse of him but once, and who, 
nevertheless, in the solemn hours of her agony, thought of 
him, and prayed to God for him, it made a deep impression 
on his mind. 

" In the evening," says Madame G , " he spoke to me 

at great length of this piety and touching virtue." 

Mr. Stendhall, who knew him during his stay at Milan in 
1816, says: — "I passed almost all my evenings with Lord B. 
Whenever this singular man was excited and spoke with en- 
thusiasm, his sentiments were noble, great, and generous; in 
short, worthy of his genius." 

And then when Mr. Stendhall speaks of walking alone 
with him in the large green-room at La Scala, he adds : — 

" Lord Byron made his appearance for half an hour every 
eveninsc, holdiner the most delightful conversation it was 
ever my good-fortune to hear. A volume of new ideas and 
generous sentiments came pouring out in such novel form, 
that one fancied one's self enjoying them for the first time. 
The rest of the evening the great man lapsed into the En- 
glish noble." 

Even biographers most hostile to Lord Byron render jus- 
tice to his sensibility and respect for real virtue, for all that 
is true and estimable. And if we seek proofs of the same in 
his poems and correspondence, we shall find it at every page, 
not excepting " Don Juan," — the satire that most exposed 
him to the anger and calumny of cant. This is why I shall 
confine myself to borrowing quotations from this poem. For 
instance, in speaking of military glory, he says : — 

" The drying up a single tear has more 
Of honest fame, than shedding seas of gore. 

"And why? — because it brings self- approbation ; 
Whereas the other, after all its glare, 
Shouts, bridges, arches, pensions from a naticn. 

Are nothing but a child of Murder's rattles."* 
* " Don Juan," canto viii. 



560 Lord Byron's 

And then again : — 

" One life saved .... 

.... is a thing to recollect 
Far sweeter than the greenest laurels sprung 
From the manure of human clay, though deck'd 

With all the praises ever said or sung; 
Though hymn'd b_v every harp, unless within 
Your heart join chorus, Fame is but a din."* 

When he speaks of Souvaroff, who, with a hand still reek- 
ing from the massacre of 40,000 combatants, began his dis- 
patch to the Autocrat in these words : — 

"Glory to God and to the Empress [Catharine]! Ismail's ours!" 

Lord Byron exchaims : — 

' ' Powers 
Eternal ! such names mingled ! 

" Methiiiks these are the most tremendous words 
Since 'Men6, Mene, Tekel,' and 'Upharsin,' 

Which hands or pens have ever traced of swords. 
Heaven help me ! I'm but little of a parson : 

What Daniel read was short-liand of the Lord's, 
Severe, sublime; the prophet wrote no farce on 

The fate of nations ; — but this Russ so witty 

Could ryhme, like Nero, o'er a burning city. 

"He wrote this Polar melod}', and set it. 

Duly accompanied bj' shrieks and groans, 

Which few will sing, I trust, but none forget it — 
For I will teach, if possible, the stones 

To rise against earth's tyrant's."! 

And then when he speaks of truly virtuous men — the 
Washingtons and Franklins — those who preferred a quiet, re- 
tired life ; so as better to walk in the paths of justice and 
goodness, like the ancient heroes of Sparta, one feels that his 
words come really from the heart. But if I wished to make 
extracts of all the proofs contained in his works, of respect 
and enthusiasm for true virtue, a volume of quotations would 
be requisite. Thus I have only chosen some at hazard, se- 
lecting them principally from that admirable satire of " Don 
Juan," which combines more deep philosophy and true mo- 
rality than is to be found in the works of many moralists ; 
and I may likewise say more wit, and knowledge of the hu- 
man heart, more kindness and indulgence, than ever before 
were united in a volume of verse or prose, and more, perhaps, 

* " Don Juan," canto is. f Ilj'd. canto viii. 



Gayety and Melancholy. 561 

than ever will be. Yet, despite of all this, the independence, 
boldness, and above all, the true state of things revealed in 
"Don Juan," excited great anger throughout the political, 
religious, and moral world of England ; indeed, passion went 
so far in distorting, that the tendency and moral bearing of 
the poem were quite misunderstood. With regard to France, 
wiier§ this satire is only known through a prose translation, 
Avhich mars half its cleverness, " Don Juan " serves, however, 
the purpose of an inexhaustible reservoir, whence writers un- 
wittingly draw much they deem their own. Besides, from 
analogy of race, he is, perhaps, better appreciated in France 
than in his own country; for few English do understand 
what true justice he rendered himself when he said, — that, 
in point of fact, his character was far too lenient, the greatest 
proof of his muse's discontent being a smile. 

But if, des23ite all this evidence, people should still persist, 
as is very possible, in asserting that Lord Byron ridiculed, 
satirized, and denied the existence of real virtues, at least we 
would ask to have these virtues named, so as to be able to 
answer. What are the virtues so insulted ? Is it truth, 
piety, generosity, firmness, abnegation, devotedness, independ- 
ence, patriotism, humanity, heroism ? But if he denied not 
one of these, if he only ridiculed and satirized their sem- 
blances, their hypocritical shadows, then let critics and envi- 
ous minds — the ignorant, or the would-be ignorant — let them 
cease, in the name of justice, thus to offer lying insult to a 
great spirit no longer able to defend himself 

Perhaps he did not render sufficient homage to that great 
and respectable virtue of his country — conjugal fidelity ; but 
he has told us why. It appeared to him that this virtue, sup- 
posed to stamp society, was, in truth, more a pretensenraan a 
reality among the higher classes in England ; and, if he ex- 
amined his own heart, this virtue wore a name for him that 
had been the martyrdom of his whole life. 

I may say, farther, that when he saw a truth shining at the 
expense of some hypocrisy, he did not shut it up in his casket 
of precious things, to carry them with him to the grave, nor 
did he only name them in a low voice to his secretaries, be- 
cause by speaking aloud he might have done some harm to 
himself {a,^, however, the great Goethe did and acknowledged). 

A A 2 



562 Lord Byron's Gayety, Etc. 

Lord Byron, without thinking of the consequences that might 
ensue to himself, deemed, on the contrary, that truth ought 
to be courageously unveiled : and to the heroism of deeds he 
added the heroism of words. 

It must not be forgotten, either, that there existed a cer- 
tain kind of timidity among the other elements of his charac- 
ter, and that jesting often helps to season a tiresome conver- 
sation, rendering it less difficult, besides enabling us to hide 
our real sentiments. 



The Melaxcholv of Lord Byron. 563 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

THE MELANCHOLY OF LORD BYRON. 

"To know the real cause of our sadness is near akin to knowing what we are 
worth." — Paradol, Study on Moralists. 

From all that we have said, and judging from that natural 
tendency of his mind to look at even serious things on the 
ridiculous, laughable side, would it be correct to infer that 
Lord Byron was always gay, and never melancholy? Those 
maintaining such an opinion, would have to bear too many 
contradictions. Physiology, psychology, and history, would 
together protest against such an assertion. We affirm, on the 
contrary, that Lord Byron was often melancholy ; but that, in 
order to judge Avell the nature and shades of his melancholy, 
it is necessary to analyze and observe it, not only in his writ- 
ings, but also in his conduct through life. Whence arose his 
melancholy ? Was it one of those moral infirmities, incurable 
and causeless, commencing from the cradle, like that of Rene, 
whose childhood was morose, and whose youth disdainful ; 
who, ere he had known life, seemed to bend beneath its mys- 
teries ; who knowing not how to be young, will no more know 
how to be old ; who in all things wanted order, proportion, 
harmony, truth ; who had nothing to produce equilibrium be- 
tween the power of genius and the indolence of will ? This 
kind of melancholy is fatal to the practice of any virtue, and 
seems like a sacrifice of heart on the altar of pride. Was it 
a melancholy like Werther's, whose senses, stimulated by pas- 
sion, of which society opposed the development, carried per- 
turbation also into the moral regions? Was it the deep 
mysterious- ailment of Hamlet, at once both meek and full of 
logic ? or the sickness of that " masculine breast with feeble 
arms ;" " of that philosopher who only wanted strength to 
become a saint ;" " of that bird without wings," said a woman 
of genius, " that exhales its calm melancholy plaint on the 
shoi'es whence vessels depart, and where only shivered rem- 



564 The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 

nants return ;" the melancholy of an Oberniann, whose good- 
ness and almost ascetic virtues are palsied for want of equi- 
librium, and whose discouragement and ennui were only cal- 
culated to exercise a baneful influence over the individual, and 
over humanity ? No ; the striking characteristics that exist 
in all these sorts of melancholy are utterly wanting to Lord 
Byron's. His was not a melancholy that had become chronic, 
like Rene's, ere arriving at life's maturity. For, whereas, the 
child Rene was gloomy and wearied, the child Byron was 
passionate and sensitive, but gay, amusing, and frolicsome. 
His fits of melancholy were only developed under the action 
of thought, reflection, and circumstances. Nor was it Wer- 
ther's kind of melancholy ; for, even at intensest height of 
passion, reason never abandoned its sway over Lord Byron's 
energetic soul ; with himself, if not with his heroes, personal 
sacrifice always took, or wished to take, the place of satisfied 
passion. 

It was not that of Hamlet, for a single instant's dissimu- 
lation would have been impossible for Lord Byron. It was 
not that of Obei-mann, for his energetic nature could not par- 
take the weakness and powerlessness of Oberon ; his strength 
equalled his genius. 

It was not, either, that of Childe Harold, for this hero of 
his first poem is, in the first and second canto, the personifica- 
tion of youthful exquisites, with senses dulled and satiated by 
excesses to which Lord Byron had never yielded when he 
composed this type, since he was then only twenty-one years 
of age, and had hardly quitted the university, where he lived 
surrounded by intellectual friends, who have all testified to 
his mode of life there, and then at Newstead Abbey, where 
he may have become a little dissipated, but still without any 
excess capable of engendering satiety. Nor was his melan- 
choly that of the darker heroes he has described in " Lara " 
and " Manfred," for he never knew remorse ; and we have al- 
ready seen to what must be attributed all these identifications 
between himself and his heroes.* 

In general, these kinds of melancholy have other causes, or 
else they arise from individual organization. With him, on 
the contrary, melancholy always originated from some moral 
* See the Introduction. 



The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 565 

external cause, which wouhl tend to show, that without such 
cause, his melancholy would not have existed, or else might 
have been quite overcome. But, before arriving at a defini- 
tion, we must analyze it, after taking a rapid glance at his 
whole life. 

It has even been said, that our conduct in early years of- 
fers a sure indication of our future ; that the man does but 
continue the child. Let us then begin by studying Byron 
during his childhood. We know from the testimony of his 
nurses and preceptors, both in Scotland and England, that 
goodness, sensibility, tenderness, and likewise gayety, with a 
tendency to jesting, formed the basis of his character. Never- 
theless, a yearning after solitude led him into solitary distant 
walks, along the sea-shore when he was living at Aberdeen, or 
amid the wild poetic mountains of Scotland, near the roman- 
tic banks of the Dee, often putting his life in danger, and 
causing much alarm to his mother. But this sprang simply 
from his ardent nature, which, far from inclining him to mel- 
ancholy, made earth seem like a paradise. 

Has he not described these ecstasies of his childhood in 
" Tasso's Lament :" — 

"From my very birih my soul was drunk with love," etc. 

This want of solitude became still more remarkable as re- 
flection acquired further development. At Harrow, he would 
leave his favorite games and dear companions to go and sit 
alone on the stone which bears his name. But this want of 
living alone sometimes in the fairyland of his imagination, 
feeding on his own sentiments, and the bright illusions of his 
youthful soul, was that what is yclept melancholy? No, no; 
what he experienced was but the harbinger of genius, destined 
to dazzle the world ; Disraeli, that great observer of the race 
of geniuses, so affirms : — 

" Eagles fly alone," exclaims Sydney, " while sheep are ever 
to be found in flocks." 

Almost all men of genius have experienced this precocious 
desire of solitude. But Lord Byron, who united so many 
contrasts, and, according to Moore, the faculties of several 
men, had also much of the child about him. And, while al- 
most all children belonging to the race of great intellects, 



566 The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 

have neither taste nor aptitude for bodily exercises and games 
of dexterity, he, by exception to the general rule, on coming 
out of his reveries, experienced equally the want of giving 
himself up passionately to the play and stir of companions 
who were inferior to him in intelligence. Up to this, then, 
we can discover no symptom in him of that fatal kind of 
melancholy — that which is hereditary and causeless. But 
anon, his heart begins to beat high, and the boy already courts 
aspirations, ardent desires, illusions that may well be destined 
to agitate, afflict, or even overwhelm him. Meanwhile let us 
follow him from Harrow to the vacations passed at Notting- 
ham and Southwell. There we shall see him acting plays 
with enthusiasm, making himself the life of the social circle 
assembled round the amiable Pigott family, delighting in mu- 
sic, and writing his first effusions in verse. Certainly it was 
not melancholy that predominated in his early poems, but 
rather generosity, kindness, sincerity, the ardor of a loving 
heart, the aspiration after all that is passionate, noble, great, 
virtuous and heroic ; but these verses also make us feel by a 
thousand delicate shades of sentiment portrayed, and by cher- 
ished illusions pertinaciously held, that melancholy may here- 
after succeed in making new passage for itself, and finding 
out the path to that loving, passionate heart. And, in truth, 
it did more than once penetrate there. For death snatched 
from him, first, two dear companions of his childhood, and 
then the young cousin, who beneath an angel's guise. on earth, 
first awakened the fire of love. And afterward Lord Byron 
gave his heart, of fifteen, to another affection, was deceived, 
met with no return,* but, on the contrary, was sorely wound- 
ed. Yet all the melancholy thus engendered was accidental 
and factitious, springing from the excessive sensibility of his 
physical and moral being, as well as from circumstances ; his 
griefs resembled the usual gi'iefs of youth. It was in these 
dispositions that he quitted Harrow for Cambridge University. 
There, one of the greatest sorrows of his life overtook him. 
It was a complex sentiment, made uji of regret at having left 
his beloved Harrow, of grief at the recent loss of a cherished 
. affection, and, lastly, sadness, caused by a very modest and 
very singular feeling for a youth of his age ; he regretted no 

* See chapter on " Generosity." 



The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 567 

longer feeling himself a child, which regret can only be ex- 
plained by a presentiment of therefore soon being called on to 
renounce other illusions. This is how he sjDoke of it still, 
when at Ravenna, in 1821 : — 

" It w^as one of the most fatal and crushing sentiments of 
my life, to feel that I was no longer a child." 

He fell ill from it. But all these sorts of melancholy, 
arising from palpable avowed causes, having their origin in 
the heart, might equally find their cure in the heart. Already 
did imagination transport him toward his beloved Ida, and he 
consoled himself by saying, that if love has wings, fi'iendship 
ought to have none. If this were an illusion, he completed it 
by writing that charming poem of his youth, " P'riendship is 
Love without Wings."* 

At Cambridge he met again one of his dearest friends from 
Harrow, Edward Long ; he also made acquaintance with the 
amiable Eddlestone, and his melancholy disappeared in the 
genial atmosphere of friendship. As long as these dear friends 
remained near him he was happy, even at Cambridge. But 
they were called to different careers, and destiny separated 
them. Long, with whom he had passed such happy days,f 
left the first to go into the guards. Eddlestone remained, 
but Lord Byron himself was already about to quit Cambridge. 
During the vacation, we see him modestly preparing his first 
poems intended as an offering to Friendship ; then going to a 
watering-place with some respectable friends ; devoting himself 
with ardor to dwimatic representations at the amateur theatre 
at Southwell, where he was more than ever the life of society; 
and thus he remained a whole year away from Cambridge, oft- 
en seeing his dear Long again in London, and visiting Harrow 
with him. When he returned, in 1807, to Cambridge, Long had 
already left, and Eddlestone was shortly to go ; thus, he no 
longer heard the song of that amiable youth, nor the flute of 
his dear Long, and melancholy well-nigh seized hold on him. 
Nevertheless, he consoled himself with projects for the future. 
Besides, he was already nineteen years of age, had made some 
progress in the journey of life, pro,bably leaving some illusions 
behind him on the bushes that Jined the roadside, and per- .' 
haps his soul had already lost somewhat of its early purity. 

* See chapter on "Friendships." f Iliid. 



568 The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 

He had certainly seen that many things in the moral world 
were far removed from the ideal forms with which he had 
invested them ; that love, even friendship, virtue, patriotism, 
generosity, and goodness, by no means attained the height of 
his first convictions. A year before, he had said : " I have 
tasted the joy and the bitterness of love." Willingly again 
would he have given way to the emotions of the heart ; but 
he too soon perceived that to do so were a useless, dangerous 
luxury, — a language scarcely understood in the world in 
which he moved; that the idols he had* believed of precious 
metal, were, in reality, made of vile clay. Then he also re- 
solved on taking his degrees in vice ; but, unlike others, he 
did so with disgust, and he called satiety, not the quantity, 
but the quality of the aliment. A year before he had also 
said : ^^ I have found that a friend may promise and yet de- 
ceived 

Magnanimous as he was, he made advances to the guilty 
friend, and took half the blame on himself ; but in vain was 
he generous, saying, with tears that flowed from his heart to 
his pen : — 

"You knew that my soul, that my heart, my existence, 
If danger demanded, were wholly your own ; 
You knew me unalter'd by years or by distance. 
Devoted to love and to friendship alone." 

And then : — 

"Repentance will cancel the vow you have made." 

And again : 

" With me no corroding resentment shall live : 
My bosom is calm'd by the simple reflection. 
That both may be wrong, and that both sliould forgive." 

The friend did not return, and Lord Byron's generous, pure, 
delicate nature — fearful lest he might be in the wrong — could 
only find peace in trying to offer reparation. He wrote to 
Lord Clare : — 

" I have, therefore, made all the reparation in my power, 
by aj)ologizing for my mistake, though with very faint hopes of 
success. His answer has not arrived, and, most probably, nev- 
er will. However, I have eased my own conscience by the 
atonement, which is humiliating enough to one of my dispo- 



The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 569 

sitioii ; yet I could not liave slept satisfied Avith the reflection 
of having, even unintentionally, injured any individual. I have 
done all that could be done to repair the injury, and there the 
affair must rest. Whether we renew our intimacy or not is 
of very trivial consequence." 

But although he could no longer rely entirely upon his 
heart for defending his loved illusions so cruelly attacked by 
reality, yet it was not possible for him to put out of sight his 
ideal of all the beauties of soul whose presence was a condi- 
tion of his being. And it was this presence that made mate- 
rial dissipated life, and also the intellectual routine existence 
at Granta, both appear so unattractive to him. He wrote a 
satire on them, and the blame inflicted shows his fine nature. 
When evil was thus judged, thus condemned, alike by pen and 
heart, there could be no real danger ; not even had it power 
to sadden him. A more formidable peril menaced him from 
another side. Sadness might now reach his heart thi'ough 
his mind. That deep intellect, so given to analyze, meditate, 
generalize, from childhood upward, according to the relative 
capacity of age, was ever busy with the great problems of 
life. It has been seen that he began to worry even his nurses 
with childish questions, and afterward much more to embar- 
rass his tutors, masters etc., and especially the excellent Dr. 
Glenny at Dulwich. A natural tendency fortified by early 
religious education evidently drew his heart to God ; but, on 
the other hand, a logical mind, fond of investigating every 
thing, made him experience the necessity of examining his 
grounds of belief. The answers, all ready prepared, made to 
him on great questions could not satisfy him ; he required to 
discuss their basis. Already the increasing play of his facul- 
ties had been revealed in that beautiful Prayer to the Divini- 
ty which constitutes his profession of faith and worship, 
" every line of which," says Moore, " is instinct with fervent 
sadness, as of a heart that grieves at loss of its illusions." 

On arriving this year at Cambridge, he found, amid a cir- 
cle of intellectual companions which Moore calls " a brilliant 
pleiad," a young man of genius, an extraordinary thinker, a 
mind that had, perhaps, some affinity to his own, but which, 
devoid of his sensibility and logic, surpassed him in hardi- 
hood ; a bold spirit, striving to scrutinize the inscrutable, and. 



570 The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 

not content Avith analysis, desirous to arrive at conclusions. 
Through the natural influence of example, and more especial- 
ly the irresistible fascination exercised by a great intelligence, 
uniting also the spirit of fun, so amusing to Lord Byron be- 
cause so like his own ; from all these causes, Matthews exer- 
cised an immense influence over him. This young man loved 
to plunge his head into depths from whence he emerged all 
dizzy. Lord Byron was guided by too reasonable a mind to 
arrive at such results. He refused to follow where deformity 
and evil were to ensue, and persisted still in looking lipward. 
Still, however, he allowed his eyes to wander over the magic 
glass, where danced a few pretended certainties conjoined 
with a host of doubts. The first he rejected, as too antipathet- 
ic to his soul, but perhaps he did not sufficiently repel all the 
doubts. And, being no longer alarmed at sounding such 
depths, he imbibed seeds -of doctrine capable of producing in- 
credulity or, at least, skepticism. Happily these seeds required 
a dry soil to fructify, and his, being so rich, thej perished, aft- 
er a short period of wretched existence. All these influences, 
and this precocious experience, were for him at this time a sort 
of personification of Mephistopheles, although not entailing 
serious consequences ; for in the main his belief was not deep- 
ly shaken. It had no other effect than to throw him, for a 
time, into uncertainty on points necessary to him, " and to 
teach him," says Moore, " to feel less embarrassed in a sort 
of skepticism." 

This disagreement between his reason and his aspirations 
becoming deeper and wider, his mind ceased always to follow 
his heart. But the latter following rather the former, though 
with sadness and fatigue, and all the problems of life becom- 
ing more and more enveloped in darkness, it is possible that 
he passed through gloomy hours, wherein equivocal expres- 
sions escaped his pen. In a word, if he avoided dizziness, he 
was not equally fortunate with regard to ennui. 

" Ennui," says the clever Viscomte D'Yzarn de Freissinet, 
in his deep and dehghtf ul book, " Les Pensees grises,^'' " ennui 
is felt by ordinary minds because they can not understand 
earth, and by superior ones because they can not understand 
heaven." 

Let us now observe Byron after he had taken his degrees 



The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 571 

at the university, and wlion about to enter into possession of 
his estates. On seeing this young nobleman of twenty, al- 
most an orphan, commence his career perfectly independent, 
call around him at Newstead Abbey his dear companions of 
Harrow and Cambridge, make up masquerades with them, 
don the costume of abbots and monks, pass the nights in run- 
ning about his own parks and the heather of Sherwood For- 
est, and the days amid youthful eccentricities, amiable hospi- 
tality, and London dissipation, it would seem as if this odd, 
shifting, noisy kind of life, however efficient for developing 
knov/ledge of men and things, must inevitably obliterate all 
trace of melancholy. 

But it was not so ; the responsibilities of life began too 
soon for him, and the joyous horizon of his twentieth year 
was already dotted with black marks indicative of the ap- 
proaching tempest. In the first place, the cassock of a real 
priest never reposed on a heart more sensitive, endowed with 
feelings deeper and less hostile to audacity of mind. More- 
over, the griefs of his boyhood had sown seeds of sadness in 
his heart, and the unjust cruel criticism lavished on his early 
poems had already inflicted a deep wound. Lord Byron, it is 
true, thought to heal this by writing a satire ; still, despite the 
vein of pleasantry indulged, he continued to discipline his 
mind by serious study of the great masters of literature and 
of the deepest thinkers. 

It must be acknowledged that the b.alra he sought in satire, 
was a dangerous caustic which, while closing one wound, 
might well cause others to open. At the same time, the money 
embarrassments inherited from his predecessor in the estate 
went on accumulating, and the period was approaching when 
the cassock, donned in boyish fun, was to be exchanged for 
the grave ermine of a peer of the realm. Who should pre- 
sent him, then, to the noble assembly, if not his guardian, and 
near relative, the Earl of Carlisle ? The young lord had al- 
ways met his coldness with deference and respect, even dedi- 
cating his early jDoems to him. But the noble earl now still 
further aggravated his unkind conduct toward his ward by 
abandoning him at this solemn moment. Not only did he 
refuse to lend countenance himself, but he even hurt and 
wounded Lord Byron by interposing delays so us to prevent 



572 The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 

or put off his reception in the House of Peers, and that solely 
because he did not like the young man's mother ! It would 
be impossible for the most loving heart, the one most suscepti- 
ble of family affections, not to have felt cruelly, under such 
circumstances, the absence of near ties, and Lord Byron did 
not then know his sister. Suffer he did, of course ; and, had 
it not been for a distant relative, despite his high birth and 
wondrous gifts, he must have entered the august assembly ac- 
companied only by his title. However frivolous the young 
man might have appeared, he was not so in reality ; and he 
hesitated at this time between a project of travelling for infor- 
mation, and the desire to take part immediately in the labors 
of the Senate. Some months before attaining his majority, 
when the wish of travelling predominated, after having in- 
formed his mother of a thousand arrangements, all equally af- 
fectionate, wise, and generous, that he was about to take for 
her during his absence, he wrote that he proposed visiting 
Persia, India, and other countries. 

" If I do not travel now," said lie, " I never shall, and all 
men should, one day or other. I have, at present, no connec- 
tions to keep me at home ; no wife, or unprovided sisters, 
brothers, etc. I shall take care of you, and when I return I 
may possibly become a politician. A few years' knowledge 
of other countries than our own will not incapacitate me for 
that part. If we see no nation but our own, we do not give 
mankind a fair chance : it is from experience, not books, we 
ought to judge of them. There is nothing like inspection and 
trusting to our senses." 

But while cherishing these ideas, his mind at the same 
time wavered between the two projects, — Parliament attract- 
ed him greatly. Despite his light words, the love of true and 
merited glory, of the beautiful and the good, ever inflamed his 
heart. What he wrote a year or two before, to his counsellor 
and friend, the Rev. Mr. Beecher, had not ceased to be his pro- 
gramme.* He said to his mother, a short time before his 
majority, thai he thought it indispensable, " as a preparation 
for the future, to make a speech in the House, as soon as he 
was admitted." He wrote the same thing still more explicit- 
ly to Harness ; for he then thought seriously of entering upon 

* See chapter on " Love of Fame." 



The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 573 

politics without delay, and his rights as a hereditary legislator 
l)aved the way for it. Nevertheless, being hurt, disappointed, 
and indignant at his guardian's conduct, and feeling himself 
isolated, he not only renounced taking any active part in the 
debates of his colleagues, but, according to Moore, appeared 
to consider the obligation of being among them painful and 
mortifying. Thus, a few days after entering Parliament, he 
returned disgusted to the solitude of his abbey, there to med- 
itate on the bitterness of precocious experience, or upon scenes 
that appeared more vast to his independent spirit, than those 
which his country presented. 

The final decision soon came. He resolved on leaving En- 
gland and takhig a long journey with his friend Hobhouse, on 
seeking sunshine, experience, and forgetf ulness for his wound- 
ed soul. It seemed really at that moment as if, through an 
accumulation of disappointment, injustice and grief, the re- 
sult of lost illusions (he had already written the epitaph on 
"Boatswain"), as if, I say, some germs of misanthropy were 
beginning to appear. But his bitterness did not reach, or 
rather, did not change his heart : every thing proves this. 
One of his friends, Lord Faulkland, was killed in a duel about 
this time ; and our rnisanthrope not only was inconsolable, but, 
despite the embarrassment of his own affairs, generously as- 
sisted the family of the deceased, who had been left in dis- 
tress. Dallas, who, through his prejudices, personal suscepti- 
bilities, and ex aggei-ated opinions, shows so little indulgence, 
to Lord Byron, thus describes however the impression made 
on him, and his conduct under the circumstances : — 

"Nature had gifted Lord Byron with most benevolent 
sentiments, which I had frequent opportunities of perceiving ; 
and I sometimes saw them give to his beautiful countenance 
an expression truly sublime. I paid him a visit the day after 
* Lord Faulkland's death ; he had just seen the lifeless body 
of one in whose society he had lately passed a pleasant day. 
He was saying to himself aloud, from time to time — ' Poor 
Faulkland !' His look was more expressive than his words. 
' But,' he added, ' his wife ! 'tis she that is to be pitied !' I 
read his soul fuU of the kindest intentions, nor were they 
sterile. If ever there were a pure action, it was the one he 
meditated then ; and the man who conceived and accomplished 



57-i The Melancholy of Lord Byron, 

it was at that moment advancing through thorns and briers 
toward the free but narrow path that leads to heaven."* 

He was setting out then on a long journey. And at that 
period long journeys were serious things. His first desire 
was to have a farewell meeting at Newstead, of all his old 
school-fellows. And that not sufficing, he even wished to car- 
ry their image away with him, so as to enjoy a sensible means 
of recalling tender remembrances of the past. But his heart 
found an aliment for misanthropy in the selfish answer given 
by one of his comrades, who was alarmed at the expense of 
getting a portrait taken. We see the impression made by 
this ungenerous reply, in the letter he addressed to his friend 
Harness : — 

" I am going abroad, if possible, in the spring, and before 
I depart I am collecting the pictures of my most intimate 
school-fellows. I want yours; I have commissioned one of 
the first miniature painters of the day to take them, of course, 
at my own expense, as I never allow any to incur the least 
expenditure to gratify a whim of mine. To mention this may 
seem indelicate ; but when I tell you a friend of ours first re- 
fused to sit, under the idea that he was to disburse on the oc- 
casion, you will see that it is necessary tb state these prelim- 
inaries, to prevent the recurrence of any similar mistake. It 
will be a tax on your patience for a week, but pray excuse it, 
as it is possible the resemblance may be the sole trace I shall 
be able to preserve of our past friendship. Just now it seems 
foolish enough, but in a few years, when some of us are dead, 
and others are separated by inevitable circumstances, it will 
be a kind of satisfaction to retain, in these images of the liv- 
ing, the idea of our former selves, and to contemplate, in the 
resemblances of the dead, all that remains of judgment, feeling, 
and a host of passions." 

If misanthropy had not been an element heterogeneous to* 
his character, it might well have assumed larger proportions 
at this moment ; for, on the very eve of his departure from 
England, his heart had yet to suffer one of those chilling 
shocks to which sensitive natures, removed far above the 
usual temperature of the world, says Moore, are only too 
much exposed. And this proof of coldness, which he com- 

* Dallas, vol. ii. 



The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 575 

])l;uns of with indignation in a note to the second canto of 
" Childe PLirold," was given precisely by one of the friends 
lie most loved. Mr. Dallas, who witnessed the immediate ef- 
fect produced by this mark of coldness, thus describes it: 

" I found him bursting with indignation. ' Will you be- 
lieve it T said he, ' I have just met and asked him to come 

and sit an hour with me ; he excused himself ; and Avhat do 
you think was his excuse ? He was engaged with his mother 
and some ladies to go shopping ! And lie knows I set out to- 
morrow to be absent for years, perhaps never to return? 
Friendship ! I do not believe I shall leave behind me, your- 
self and family excepted, and perhaps my mother, a single be- 
ing who will care what becomes of me !' "* 

The conduct of this friend gave him so much pain, that a year 
after he wrote again about it, from Constantinople, to Dallas : — 

" The only person I counted would feel grieved at my de- 
parture took leave of me with such coldness, that if I had not 
known the heart of man I should have been surprised. I 
should have attributed it to some offenses on my part, had I 
ever been guilty of aught save too much affection for hira." 

Dallas thoirght that some lady, from a spirit of vengeance, 
had excited this young man to slight Lord Byron. 

I will not here seek to discover whether he was right or 
wrong. It suffices that he could believe it, for me to say, that 
this singular misanthropy, born of heart-deceptions, was in 
reality nothing else but grief, the causes of which might each 
be enumerated, but the intensity of which we do not really 
know, since that deep capacity is the sad privilege of beings 
highly endowed. 

In any case, it is certain that when he left England the 
measure of disappointments capable of prod^icing real melan- 
choly in such a sensitive heart was quite filled up. Is it, then, 
surprising that he, like his hero, " Childe Harold," should see 
with indifference the shores of his native laiid recede ? But 
if, unhappily, the gloomy ideas he welcomed for a moment 
brought about a regrettable habit, no more to be lost, of 
adopting, in his language spoken and written, expressions and 
mystifications that too often concealed his real feelings, only 
letting them be seen through the medium of his mind (a sure 

* Jlooie, vol. i 



576 The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 

way of making him misunderstood), he could not long stand 
against the pi-oofs of real attachment shown him by his fellow- 
traveller, and, indeed, by all who came near him. Even before 
setting sail, the influence of this sentiment, combined with his 
natural disposition to gayety, became visible ; all annoyances 
seemed forgotten in the agreeable sensation of a first voyage 
that was to bear him away from the country where he had 
suffered so much, and which would probably show him, in 
other lands, more favorable specimens of the human race. 
Indeed, this is quite evident in the letters and gay verses sent 
off from Falmouth to his friends Drury and Hodgson, as well 
as in the more serious strain, though still gay and affectionate, 
in which he, at the same time, addressed his mother.* 

Hardly had he landed at Lisbon, when his heart, yearning 
after the beautiful, expanded into admiration at sight of the 
Tagus and the beauties of Cintra ; displaying alike his high 
moral sense of things, whether he expressed admiration br in- 
flicted blame.f 

We see his whole nature revolt at baseness, ingratitude, 
cowardice, ferocity, all kinds of moral deformity; just as 
much as it was attracted and delighted by patriotism, courage, 
devotion, sacrifice, love carried to heroism, grace, and beauty. 
We perceive, in the poet's soul, a freshness and a moral vigor, 
that shine all the more brightly, contrasted with the misan- 
thropical melancholy of the hero of his legend. But this person- 
age had been imprudently chosen to typify a state of mind into 
which youth often falls, and which, perhaps. Lord Byron him- 
self went through during a few short hours of disenchantment. 
The impressions thus gathered, were treasured in his memory 
until they came to maturity some months later ; then they is- 
sued from his pen in flowing numbers, whose magic power he 
then ignored: but assuredly the fine sentiments expressed 
came from the soul of the minstrel, not from the satiated f eel- 
ingless hero, who was incapable of experiencing them. Let 
people only make the distinction between the two personages 
whom malice has taken pleasui'e in confounding, an error wil- 
lingly adopted by a certain set and imposed on credulous 
minds.J 

* See Moore, 35th and 36th letters. f See "Childe Harold." 

J See Introduclion. 



The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 577 

The relation between the two is not one of family or race, 
but a purely accidental external resemblance ; the result of 
some strange fancy and intellectual want in the poet, whose 
powerful imagination, while having recourse only to his own 
spontaneity for the creation of ideal beings and types, yet re- 
quired to rest always on reality, for painting the material 
world and for embodying his metaphysical conceptions. 

Thus these two personages leave the same shore, on the 
same vessel, to make the same voyage, and meet with the 
same adventures. Both have the same family relations, — a 
mother, a sister ; yes, but their souls are not in the same 
state, because not of the same nature. That results clearly 
from a simple inspection of the poem, for all who read in good 
faith; since, out of 191 stanzas that make up the first two 
cantos of " Childe Harold," there are 112 wherein the poet 
forgets his hero, speaks in his own name, and shows his real 
soul-^a soul full of energy and beauty, becoming enthusiastic 
at sight of the wonders displayed in creation, of grandeur, 
virtue, and love. 

Moralists of good faith can tell whether a mind that was 
corrupted, satiated, wearied, could possibly have felt such en- 
thusiasm. In reality, these emotions betokened the future 
poet, then unknown to the world and to himself. Let us re- 
turn to the man, — the best justification for the poet. From 
Lisbon he wrote another letter, full of fun, to his friend Hodg- 
son, Already he found all well ; better than in England. 
Already he declared himself greatly amused with his pilgrim- 
age : the sight of the Tagus pleased him, Cintra delighted 
him ; he talked Latin at the convent, fed on oranges, embraced 
every body, asked news of every body and every thing ; " and 
we find him," says Moore, " in this charming, gay, sportive, 
schoolboy humor, just at the very moment that ' Childe Har- 
old ' is about to reveal to the world his misanthropy, disgust, 
and insensibility. Lord Byron went from Lisbon to Seville, 
going seventy miles a day on horseback in the heat of a Span- 
ish July, always delighted, complaining of nothing (in a coun- 
try where all was wanting), and he arrived in perfect health. 
There, in that beautiful city of serenades and love-making 
courtships, his handsome face and person immediately attract- 
ed the attention of the fair sex. He was not insensible to the 

Bb 



578 The Melancholy of Loed Byron. 

lively demonstrations of two sisters, and especially of the beau- 
teous Doiia Josefa, who declared, with naive Spanish frank- 
ness, how much she liked him. This young girl and her sister, 
who was equally charming, made him all kinds of offers, say- 
ing, when he left: — 'Adieu, handsome creature, I like thee 
much ; and Josefa asked to have at least a lock of his beauti- 
ful hair. On arriving at Cadiz, the lovely daughter of an ad- 
miral of high birth, with whom he was thrown in contact, 
could not hide from her parents or himself her partiality for 
him. She wished to teach him Spanish, never thought he 
could be near enough to her at the theatre, called hini to her 
side in crowds, made him accompany her home, invited him 
to return to Cadiz, and, in short," Moore says : — 

" Knowing the beauties of Cadiz, his imagination, dazzled 
by the atti-action of several, was on the j^oint of being held 
captive by one." 

He escaped this danger from being obliged to set out for 
Gibraltar, where he also met with many attentions from per- 
sons of rank among his countrymen ; but he encountered an- 
other peril at the island of Calypso (Malta). For he met 
there a real Calypso, — a young woman of extraordinary beauty 
(the daughter and the wife of an ambassador), and no less re- 
markable for her qualities of mind than for her singular posi- 
tion. All his time at Malta was passed between studying a 
language and the society of this goddess. And the true ac- 
count of the attraction with which he inspired this beautiful 
heroine, and Avhich he amply returned, is not certainly to be 
found in the stanzas of " Childe Harold," but in the verses 
addressed from the monastery of Zitza to the beautiful Flor- 
ence, who had carried off at the same time (says he) both the 
ring he had refiised to the Seville beauty and likewise his 
heart. On arriving in Albania (ancient Epirus), he went to 
visit Ali Pasha at Tepeleni, his country-seat ; and the sight of 
this beautiful, amiable young man so softened the heart of the 
ferocious old Moslem, that he wished to be considered as Lord 
Byron's father, treated him like a son, caused his palaces to be 
opened to him, surrounding him with the most delicate atten- 
tions, sending him fresh drinks and all the delicacies of an 
Oriental table ; he also ordered the Albanian selected to ac- 
company Lord Byron to defend him if requisite at the peril 



The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 579 

of his life. This Albanian, named Basilius, \\'ould not leave 
Lord Byron afterward. Wherever any English residents, 
consuls, or ambassadors conld be found, Lord Byron was tlie 
object of a thousand attentions and kindnesses. At Constan- 
tinople, the English ambassador, Adair, wished him to lodge 

at his palace ; Mr. S projjosed the same thing at Patras. 

When he fell ill, he was taken care of, most affectionately even, 
by the Albanese. All the sympathies enlisted during his trav- 
els (and those who knew him 'thought them most natural) 
must certainly have acted on his loving, grateful heart, banish- 
ing misanthropy if he had experienced it. But did it really 
exist ? Must not even his peace of conscience have counter- 
balanced bitter remembrances ? 

His conscience was unburdened, for the griefs he had had 
Avere not merited by him. If a young girl had deceived him, 
he on his side had deceived no one ; if a guardian had neg- 
lected and failed in duties toward him, he had always be- 
haved respectfully toward this bad guardian. If hard-hearted 
critics had insulted, and tried to stifle his budding genius, 
modest and timid withal, he had already taken his revenge, 
sure to repent some day of the harshness and injustice which 
passion had, perhaps, led him into ; if his affairs were embai'- 
rassed, they had come to him thus by inheritance. If he had 
taken a share in some youthful dissipation, disgust had quickly 
followed ; not a tear or a seduction had he wherewith to re- 
proach himself. All these testimonies furnished by his con- 
science, and so consoling in every case, must have been doubly 
so to a heart like his, which, by his own avoAval, could not go to 
rest with the weight of any remorse upon it. And, truly, all 
his correspondence certifies this. 

Already at Gibraltar, Lord Byron began writing letters full 
of clever pleasantry, either to his mother or his friends, and 
his correspondence always continued in the same tone, with 
nothing that betrayed melancholy, far less misanthropy like 
Childe Harold's, although he was composing that poem at this 
time. 

At Malta, it was impossible to find shelter.* His compan- 

* " His lordship was in better spirits when I had met with some adventure, 
and he cbiicklpd with an inward sense of enjoyment, not altogether without spleen, 
a kind of malicious satisfaction, as his companions recounted, with all bccomiUf^ 



580 The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 

ions grew impatient, but Lord Byron retained his good-humor, 
laughing and joking. On the mountains of Epirus, which 
were infested by brigands, the Albaniari escort, given him by 
Ali Pasha, lost their way in the middle of the night, and were 
surprised by a terrific storm. For nine hours he advanced on 
horseback under torrents of rain ; and when at last he reached 
his companions his gayety was still the same. Assailed by a 
frightful temjDest while going by sea from Constantinople to 
Athens, shipwreck seemed impending. Every one was crying 
out in despair ; Lord Byron alone consoled and encouraged the 
rest, then he wrajjped himself up in his Albanian capote, and 
went to sleep quietly, until his fate should be decided. On vis- 
iting a cavern with his friend liobhouse, they lost their way, 
their torch went out, and they had no prospect but to remain 
there, and perish with hunger. Hobhouse was in despair ; 
but Lord Byron kept up his courage with jests, and presence 
of mind fit to save them, and which did so in effect. Priva- 
tions, rigor of seasons, sufferings that drew complaints from 
the least delicate, and from his own servants, had no effect on 
his good-humor.* 

All this does not simply show his courage and good natjiral 
dispositions, it likewise proves that there was not the making 
of a misanthrope in him. And besides, his fellow-traveller 
Hobhouse says so positively, in his account of their journey, 
when relating why Lord Byron could not accompany him in 
an excursion to Negropont ; for he energetically expresses 
his regret at being obliged to separate, even for so short a 
time, from a companion, who, according to him, united to 
•perspicacity of wit and originality of observation, that gay 
and lively temper ichich Tceeps attention awake under the 
pressure of fatigue^ softening every difficulty and every dan- 
ger. 

Truly it might be said that Lord Byron was superior to 
the weaknesses of humanity. He Avas evidently patient and 
amiable in the highest degree. Greece appeared to him de- 
gravity, their woes and sufferings as an apology for begging a bed and a morsel 
for the night. God forgive ! but I partook of BjTon's levity at the idea of per- 
sonages so consequential wandering destitute in the streets, seeking for lodgings 
from door to dooi", and rejected at all. Next day, however, they were accom- 
modated liy the governor with an agreeable house," etc. — Galt, p. 66. 
* See cliaptcr ou " Courage, Coolness, and Self-control." 



The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 581 

lightful, — fin enchanting country with a clondless sky. lie 
liked Athens so much that, on quitting it for the first time, 
he was obliged to set off at a gallop to have courage enough 
to go. And when he returned there, though from the cloister 
of the Franciscan monastery, w^here he had fixed his abode, he 
could no longer even perceive the pretty heads of the three 
Graces entre les jilantes embaumees de la coiir y he felt him- 
self just as happy, because he devoted his time to study, and 
mixed with persons of note — such as the celebrated Lady 
Hester Stanhope, Lord Sligo, and Bruce : souvenirs which he 
has consecrated in his memoirs, saying Lady Hester's (?) was 
the most delightful acquaintance he had made in Greece.* 

He saw Greeks, Turks, Italians, French, and Germans, and 
was delighted. Now could he observe the character of per- 
sons of all nations, and he became more than ever persuaded 
that travelling is necessary to complete a man's education ; he 
was happy at being able to verify the superiority of his own 
countiy, and to increase his knowledge by finding the con- 
trary. He was never either disappointed or disgusted. He 
lived with both great and small ; passing days in the palaces 
of pashas, and nights in cow-stables with shepherds ; always 
temperate, he never enjoyed better health. » " Truly," said 
he, " I have no cause to comj^lain of my destiny." At Con- 
stantinople he found the inhabitants good and peaceable; 
the Turks appeared superior to the Greeks, the Greeks to 
the Spaniards, and the Spaniards to the Portuguese. It was 
the man wearied of all, the misanthrope, Avho wrote all this 
to his mother, concluding thus : — " I have gone through a 
great deal of fatigue, but have not felt tcearied for one m- 
stant r 

All the letters addressed to his friends Drury and Hodgson, 
from Greece or Turkey, were equally devoid of misanthropy, 
and, indeed, generally full of jokes. It was only when too 
long a silence- on their part awakened painful remembrances, 
causing a sort of nostalgia of friendship, that a cry of pain 
once escaped liim in these words : — " Truly, I have no friends 
in the world !" But one feels that he did not believe it, and 
only spoke as coquettish women do, knowing they are beloved, 
and willing to hear the old tale repeated. 

* Moore, vol. i. 



582 The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 

Again, it was this same man of woi"n-out feeling, who, de- 
spite the embarrassed state of his affairs, showed such unex- 
ampled generosity to his mother, and to friends requiring aid 
both in England and Greece ; who likewise displayed touch- 
ing solicitude toward servants left behind him at home, or 
even sent away so as not to over-fatigue their youth or their 
old age : and, finally, who, on learning that one of his depend- 
ents was about to commit a bad action, abandoning a young- 
girl whom he had seduced, wrote to his mother : — 

" My opinion is that B ought to marry Miss N ; 

our first duty is not to do evil, our second to repair it. I will 
have no seducers on my estates, and will not grant my depend- 
ents a privilege I would not take myself : namely, of leading 
astray our neighbors' daughters. 

" I hope this Lothario will follow my example, and begin 
by restoring the girl to society, or by my father's beard he 
shall hear of me." 

And then he also recommends a young servant to her : — 

" I pray you to show kindness to Robert, who must miss 
his master ; poor boy ! he would scarcely go back." 

This letter alone shows a freshness of feeling quite consol- 
atory ; certainly " Childe Harold " was not capable of it. 

But despite all these proofs of his good-humor, gayety, and 
antimisanthropical dispositions, we could cite persons who, 
even at this period, thought him melancholy. Mr, Gait, for 
instance, whom chance had brought in contact with him, hav- 
ing met on the same vessel going from Gibraltar to Greece ; 
and then the British ambassador at Constantinople, Mr. Adair, 
and even Mr. Bruce, at Athens. How then shall we reconcile 
these opj)osite testimonies ? It may be done by analyzing his 
fits of melancholy, observing the time and places of their man- 
ifestation. 

I have said that Lord Byron's melancholy had always real 
or probable causes (only capable of aggravation from his ex- 
tremely sensitive temperament), and it has been seen that 
siqjerabundant causes existed when he left England. That 
during the whole period of his absence, they may, from time 
to time, have cast some shade over him, notwithstanding his 
natural gayety and his strength of mind, is at least very prob- 
able. But did Mr. Gait, Mr, Adair, and Mr, Bruce, really wit- 



The Melancholy of Lord Bykon. 588 

iiess the return of these impressions ? or would it not be 
more natural to believe, since that better agrees Avith the ob- 
servations made by those living constantly with him, that, 
through some resemblance of symptoms, they may have taken 
for melancholy another psychological phenomenon generally 
remarked— ^namely, the necessity of solitude, experienced by a 
high meditative and poetic nature like his ? Indeed, what 
does Gait say ? — 

" When night arrived and there were lights in the vessel, 
he held himself aloof, took his station on the rail, between the 
pegs on which the sheets are belayed and the shrouds, and 
there, for hours, sat in silence, enamored, as people say, of the 
moon. He was often strangely absent — it may have been 
from his genius ; and, had its sombre grandeur been then 
known, this conduct might have been explained ; but, at the 
time, it threw as it were, around him the sackcloth of peni- 
tence. Sitting amid the shrouds and rattlings, in the tran- 
quillity of the moonlight, composing melodies scarcely formed 
in his mind, he seemed almost an apparition, suggesting dim 
reminiscences of him who shot the albatross. He was as a 
mystery in a winding-sheet crowned with a halo. 

" The influence of the incomprehensible phantasma which 
hovered about Lord Byron has been more or less felt by all 
who ever approached him. That he sometimes descended 
from the clouds, and was familiar and earthly, is true ; but 
his dwelling was amid the murk and the mist, and the home 
of his spirit in the abyss of the storm and the hiding-places 
of guilt. He was at the time of which I am speaking scarce- 
ly two-and-twenty, and could claim no higher praise than hav- 
ing written a clever satire ; and yet it was impossible, even 
then, to reflect on the bias of his mind, as it was revealed by 
the casualties of conversation, without experiencing a presen- 
timent, that he was destined to execute extraordinary things. 
The description he has given of " Manfred " in his youth, was 
of himself : — 

' My spirit walk'd not with the souls of men, 
Nor look'd upon the earth with human eyes ; 
The tliirst of their ambition was not mine, 
The aim of tlieir existence was not mine; 
My joys, my griefs, my p:issions, and my powers. 
Made me a stranger.' " 



584 The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 

All that is very avcU, but the only astonishing part is Mr, 
Gait's astonishment. The incomprehensible phantom of mel- 
ancholy and caprice then hanging over Lord Byron, was es- 
pecially his genius seeking an outlet ; it was the melancholy 
that lays hold of so many great minds, because, having a vis- 
ion of beauty and fame before their eyes, they fear not attain- 
ing to it. That it Avas which one day led Petrarch, all tear- 
ful, to his consoler John of Florence. If almost all great 
geniuses, ere carving out their path, have experienced this 
fever of the soul, falling into certain kinds of melancholy, that 
put on all sorts of forms, — sometimes noisy, sometimes capri- 
cious, sometimes misanthropical, was there not greater reason 
for Lord Byron to undergo such a crisis — at a period when 
energy of heart and mind was not yet balanced by confidence 
in his own genius ? For he had not met with a John of Flor- 
ence ; he had been so much hurt at the cruel recej)tion given 
to his first attempts, that it appeared to him he ought to seek 
another direction for the employment of his energetic facul- 
ties, and turn to active life, as many of his tastes invited. 
But his genius, unknown to the world as to himself, was, how- 
ever, fermenting within his brain, feeding on dreams ; now 
l^acing a decl^, now beneath a starry sky, anon by moonlight, 
and causing him to absorb from every thing all homogene- 
ous to his nature ; and thus " Childe Harold " came to light. 
When Lord Byron took his pen, the mechanical part of the 
work alone remained to be done. The elaboration and medi- 
tation of it had taken place almost unknown to himself, so 
that his conceptions remained latent, and took their shape by 
degrees in his brain, before being fixed in his writings. He 
penned " Childe Harold " at Janina and Athens ; but it was 
on the vessel's deck, in that dreamy attitude just seen by Mr. 
Gait, that he had moulded the clay of his first statue, and 
given it an immortal form. Could he have done so, if he had 
always remained in society on deck, laughing, joking,,giving 
way to all his charming, witty bursts of gayety, as he did 
Avhile coasting the shores of Sicily, when, from time to time, 
his playful nature enabled him not only to forget the wounds 
of his heart, and the disagreeable remembrances left behind, 
but also to impose silence on the severe requirements of his 
genius '? 



The Melancholy of Lord Byeon. 585 

The same causes must have produced the same ophiions 
from the British ambassador at Constantinople. Without 
even speaking of the irksomcness of etiquette, always so dis- 
tasteful to Lord Byron, that Moore looks upon it as one of the 
causes of the apparent sadness remarked by Adair, we ought 
to remember that he left Constantinople on board the same 
frigate as the ambassador, making a sea-voyage of four days 
Math htm. During these four days, it is likely that Lord By- 
ron did not deny himself solitude, and that he also courted the 
secret influences exercised by starry nights on the Bosphorus- 
as he had done under similar circumstances on the ^gean 
Sea. But he had yet another motive for sadness during this 
passage, since he was then about to separate from his friend 
and fellow-traveller, Hobhouse, who was obliged to go back to 
England. Thusj for the first time. Lord Byron would soon 
find himself alone in a foreign land. The effect produced by 
this situation must have shown itself in his countenance ; for 
he was experiencing beforehand quite a new sensation, where- 
in any satisfaction at perfect indei^endence and solitude must 
liave been more than counterbalanced in his feeling, grateful, 
and in reality most sociable nature, by real grief at such a sepa- 
ration. And I doubt not that when setting foot on the barren 
isle of Chios, with its jutting rocks and tall rugged-looking 
mountains, just after having bade Hobhouse adieu, I doubt 
not that his heart experienced one of those burning suffoca- 
ting feelings that belong equally to intense sorrow and joy. 
When, then, a few days later, he wrote to his mother for the 
evident purpose of calming the uneasiness she must have felt 
at knowing him to be alone, and when he mentioned with in- 
difference the departure of his friend, he was exaggerating, 
except in what he said of loving solitude. That he did not 
even sufiiciently express, for he might have boldly declared 
that it was positively requisite to him ; and, indeed, his resig- 
nation at loss of a friend so thoroughly appreciated is the best 
proof we could have of it. 

In the workings of Lord Byron's intellect, observation, re- 
flection, and solitary meditation were brought into play much 
more than imagination.* Every thing with him took its 

* Gait says that what he relates of his visit to AH Pasha has all the freshness 
and life (fa scene going on under one's own eye. 

BiJ 2 



586 The Melancholy of Lord Byron, 

source from facts ; and the vital flame that circulates in every 
phase of his writings is the very essence of this reality, first 
elaborated in his brain and then stamped on his verse. As long 
as this first kind of work of observation was going on, as long 
as he was only occupied in imbibing truths of the visible 
world that were sure to strike him, and storing them in his 
memory, society, and especially intellectual society, suited him. 
But when he began to shape his observations into form, by 
dint of reflection and meditation, generalizing and making de- 
ductions, then constant society forced upon him fatigued him, 
and solitude became indispensable. Now it was more particu- 
larly at the period of which we are speaking that his mind 
was in the situation described. He had just visited Albania, 
whose inhabitants were a violent, turbulent race, animated 
with a passionate love of independence, who Avere ever rising 
in rebellion against authority, and whose every sentiment, 
passion, and principle, formed a perfect contrast with all ex- 
isting in his own country. He had become familiar with 
their usages, and recognized in them the possession of virtues 
which he loved, though mixed up with vices which he ab- 
horred. He had gone through strange emotions and advent- 
ui'es among them ; his life had often been in danger from the 
elements, from pirates and brigands ; on the throne sat a 
prince who united monstrous vices to a few virtues, who, wear- 
ing gentleness on his coi;ntenance, was yet so ferocious in 
soul, that Byron, despite the favors lavished on himself, felt 
constrained to paint the tyrant in his real colors. He found 
in these contrasts, in this moral phenomenon, that Avhich 
made him shudder, and precisely because it did cause shud- 
dering, the source of soul-stirring, most original poetry, the 
type of his Eastern verses — of " Conrad," " The Giaour," and 
" Lara " — which, having been admitted into the fertile soil of 
his brain, were one day to come forth in all their terrible 
truth, though softened down by some of his own personal 
qualities ; and having gone through, unknown to him, a long 
process of warm fertilization, while nvii'sed in solitary reflec- 
tion. Thus solitude was necessary to him ; and this want, I 
again repeat, was an intellectual one, and had nothing to do 
with melancholy. From Chios Lord Byron went to Athens, a 
residence so sad and monotonous at this period, that it was 



The Melancholy of Lokd Byron. 587 

well calculated to give rather than cure the spleen. But as he 
had no malady of this kind, after an excursion into the Morea 
with Lord Sligo, — a college friend and companion to whom 
nothing could be refused, — he returned to Athens ; and here, 
in order to enjoy his cherished independence, would not even 
give himself the distraction of seeing those lovely young 
faces he used to admire behind the geraniums at their win- 
dows, and which had charmed him some months before he 
took up his abode at the Franciscan convent. There, amid the 
silence of the cloister, he could commune freely with his own 
mind, allow it full expansion, and revert, at will, from solitary 
contemplation to the most varie<i studies, especially to that he 
always so much appreciated — the study of mankind in gen- 
eral. 

" Here," he wrote to his mother, " I see and have conversed 
with French, Italians, Germans, Danes, Greeks, Turks, Ameri- 
cans, etc. ; and, without losing sight of my- own, I can judge 
of the countries and manners of others. When I see the 
superiority of England (which, by-the*by, we are a great deal 
mistaken about in many things) I am pleased, and where I 
find her inferior, I am at least enlightened. Now, I might 
have staid, smoked in your towns, or fogged in your counti-y 
a century Avitliout being sure of this, and without acquiring 
any thing more useful or amusing at home." 

And then he adds : — 

" I hope, on my return, to lead a quiet, recluse life ; but 
God knows and does best for us all ; at least so they say, and 
I have nothing to object, as, on the whole, I have no reason to 
complain of my lot. I trust this will find you well, and as 
happy as one can be ; you will, at least, be pleased to hear I 
am so." 

It was in this admirable frame of mind that he often went 
from Athens to Cape Colonna. And amid these ruins, wash- 
ed by the blue waves of the ^gean Sea, immortalized by 
Plato, who here taught his half-Chi-istian philosophy, Loi-d 
Byron took his seat at the celestial banquet spread by the 
great master, and entered into full possession of his genius. 
For, although he ignored its great power and extent, it is im- 
possible that he should not have had in hours like these, some 
vision of the future, some presentiment of coming glory. 



588 The Melancholy of Lord Byron". 

which, piercing thi'ough the veils that yet shrouded his gen- 
ius, gave moments of ineffable delight. When he bathed in 
some solitary spot, he tells us in his memoranda that one of 
his greatest delights was to sit on a rock overlooking the 
waves, and to remain there whole hours lost in admiration of 
sky and sea, " absorbed," says Moore, " in that sort of vague 
reverie, which, however formless and indistinct at the mo- 
ment, settled afterward on his pages into those clear, bright 
pictures which will endure forever." 

One day, while he was swimming under the rocks of Cape 
Colonna, a vessel from the coast of Attica drew near. On 
board, going from London to Athens, were two celebrated 
personages — Lady Hester Stanhope and Mi\ Bruce. The first 
object that greeted their eyes, on nearing Sanium, was Lord 
Byron, playing all alone with his favorite element. Some 
days after, his friend Lord Sligo wished him to make their 
acquaintance, and .he saw a great deal of them at Athens. In 
his memoranda the following words are ai^plied to them: — 
" It was the commencement (their meeting at Cape Colonna) 
of the most delightful acquaintance I have made in Greece." 
And he wished to assure Mr. Bruce, in case these lines should 
ever fall under his notice, of the pleasure he experienced in 
recalling the time they had passed together at Athens. Now 
I do not see any symptom of melancholy in all this, nor in all 
preceding, and yet Bruce thought there was. Did he, then, 
also consider the joy Lord Byron felt in solitude, and his 
indifference for the false conventional enthusiasm his coun- 
trymen affected to display at sight of the ruins of Greece, 
as so many other tokens of melancholy? In reality Lord 
Byron was averse to all kinds of affectation, made no ex- 
ception in favor of the artistic pretensions which constitute 
the hypocrisy of taste, and only gave the sincere, ardent 
homage of his soul to those things of antiquity that recall 
great names or great actions, and to sublime scenes in nature. 
Notwithstanding his fine intelligence, it is not impossible that 
Mr. Bruce also may have shared the errors of superficial minds ; 
and it is likewise possible that Lord Byron may really, during 
the last period of his sojourn at Athens, have sometimes been 
melancholy, for causes of grief were certainly not wanting. 
His man of business wished Lord Byron at this time to sell 



The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 589 

Newstead, so as to get liis affairs into some detiuite order. 
Perhaps it would have been wise, but such a determination 
was extremely repugnant to him, for he was very fond of 
Newstead, and had even written to his mother, before leaving, 
that she might be quite easy on this head, as lie would never 
part with it. However, his agent, wishing to get him back to 
England, then affected negligence, would not write, and made 
him wait for money. Lord Byron grew uneasy and alarmed, 
was out of humor, and often seemed capricious, because these 
circumstances obliged him to change his travelling plans, and 
finally left him no other alternative but to return to England, 
where, as he wrote to a friend, his first interview would be 
with a lawyer, the second with a creditor ; and then would come 
discussions with miners, farmers, stewards and all the disagree- 
ables consequent on a ruined property and disputed mines. 

After having resisted all these fears for some time, he was 
obliged to decide on returning. Behold him, then, on the 
road to England. 

At Malta he had attacks of fever to which his state of mind 
was certainly not wholly foreign. " We have seen," says 
Moore, "from the letters written by him on his passage home- 
ward (on. board the ' Volage ' frigate) how far from cheerful or 
happy was the state of mind in which he returned. Li truth, 
even for a disposition of the most sanguine cast, there was 
quite enough in the discomfort that now awaited him in En- 
gland to sadden its hopes and check its buoyancy." 

And yet in these letters, melancholy at bottom, which he 
addressed to his mother and friends during this tiresome voy- 
age of more than six weeks, we stiU perceive, overriding all, 
his kind, sensitive, playful nature. He told them that if one 
can not be happy, one must at least try to be a little gay ; 
that if England had ceasecl to smile on him, there were other 
skies more serene; that he was coming back shaken by fever 
morally and physically, but with a firm, intrepid spirit. And, 
in short, pleasantry never failed him. 

Always admirable toward his mother, he spoke of his apa- 
thy, but re-assured her directly, adding : — 

" Dear mother " (he wrote to her on the 'Volage ' frigate), 
"within that apathy I certainly do not comprise yourself, as I 
will prove by every means in my power. 



590 The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 

" P.S. — You will consider Newstead as your house, not 
mine, and me only as a visitor."* 

, He had hardly arrived in London when Mr. Dallas hasten- 
ed to greet him, and instead of finding him changed, thought 
he was in excellent health, with a countenance that betrayed 
neither melancholy nor any trace of discontent at his return. 
The truth is, that those sorrows which did not reach his heart 
were never very deep with Lord Byron, But already a most 
formidable tempest was gathering on the horizon of his fate, 
for it was one that would cruelly wound his heart. Perhaps 
it was some vague, niexplicable presentiment of what was 
threatening him that saddened his return to his native coun- 
try. The storm burst as soon as he set foot in London ; for 
he was summoned in haste to Newstead, his mother's life be- 
ing declared in danger. He set out instantaneously, but on 
arriving found only a coi'pse ! This spectacle w^as still before 
his eyes ; he had hardly quitted the chamber of death, Avhere, 
in the obscurity of night and alone, believing himself free from 
all observation, he had given way in silence and darkness to 
the real sentiments of his heart, weeping bitterly the loss of a 
mother who had idolized him, when in rapid succession news 
arrived of the deaths of his dearest friends. Matthews, his 
mind's idol, had just been drowned in the river Cam, at Cam- 
bridge ; Wingfield, one of his heart-idols, was dying of fever 
at Coimbra ; his dear Eddlestone Was in the last stage of con- 
sumption ; and, finally, he learned the death of another loved, 
mysterious being. Six deaths within a few short weeks ! 

" If to be able," says Moore, " to depict powerfully the pain- 
ful emotions it is necessary first to have experienced them, or, 
in other words, if, for the poet to be great the man must suf- 
fer. Lord Byron, it must be owned, paid early this dear price 
of mastery." 

This was certainly a most painful crisis in his existence. 
What he felt then can not be called melancholy ; it was truly 
desolation, agony of heart. Seeing himself alone in his vener- 
able but gloomy abode, beside the dead body of his mother, 
solitude was for the first time intolerable to him, and, despite 
his strength of mind, he experienced moments of weakness. 
In his agony he wrote a letter to his friend Scroope Davies 

* See Moore, Letters 52 and 54, to Mrs. Byron. 



The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 591 

that is truly painful to read, so much does it bear the impress 
of intense suffering. 

" Some curse hangs over me and mine," says he. " My 
mother lies a corpse in this house ; one of my best friends is 
drowned in a ditoli. What can I say, or think, or do ? 

" jNIy dear Davics, if you can spare a moment, do come down 
to me ; I want a friend. Come to me, Scroope, I am almost 
desolate, left almost alone in the world. I must enjoy the 
survivors while I can. Write or come, but come if you can, 
or one or both." 

Hardly had he allowed himself this heartrending expres- 
sion of grief, most touching for tliose who knew his repug- 
nance to showing any sensibility of heart, when a new calam- 
ity overtook him. His dear friend, Wingfield, died at Coim- 
bra at the age of twenty-one. Thoughts of death even took 
possession of Lord Byron's soul, influencing and directing all 
his actions. Neither self-love, nor the hope of great success 
with " Childe Harold," which had been announced to him as 
he passed through London, any longer could charm ; tears dim- 
med the lustre of fame ; he could only occupy himself Avith the 
fate of the surviving, and resolved on making his will in case of 
his own death. We find him then at this time solely engaged 
in making out this new deed. He destroyed the old will, ren- 
dered useless by the death of his mother, and took care to for- 
get no one in the new one ; all his servants were mentioned 
with admirable solicitude ; and, in short, his last testament ful- 
ly displayed the beautiful, generous soul that had dictated it. 

Some wrecks after, he wrote to Dallas : — 

" At three-and-twenty I am left alone, and what more can 
we be at seventy ? It is true that I am young to begin again, 
but with whom can I retrace the laughing part of life ?" 

" Indeed," writes he at the same time to Hodgson, " the blows 
followed each other so rapidly, that I am yet stupid from the 
shock ; and though I do eat, and drink, and talk, and even laugh 
at times, yet I can hardly persuade myself that I am awake 
did not every morning convince me mournfully to the contrary. 

" Davies has been here ; his gayety (death can not mar it) 
has done me service ; but, after all, ours was a hollow laughter ! 
You will write to me ? I am solitary, and I never felt solitude 
irksome before." 



592 The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 

His moral sufferings had never been so great ; and what he 
said and experienced under these circumstances, amply jirove 
that solitude was good for him, when not unhappy. " I can do 
nothing," writes he to Dallas, " and my days pass, except for a 
few bodily exercises, in uniform indolence and idle insipidity." 

The task of publishing " Childe Harold " was left to Dallas, 
and the certainty of its success found him pretty nearly indif- 
ferent. When his heart was in pain, Lord Byron's self-love 
always lay dormant. But destiny was still far from granting 
him any respite. Eddlestone, that dear friend, on whose true 
affection he most relied, as well as another beloved one, whose 
name ever remained locked within his breast, both died about 
this time ; so that, as he says in his preface, during the short 
space of two months, he lost six persons most dear. In an- 
nouncing this new misfortune to Dallas, he expresses himself 
in the following woi'ds : — 

" I have almost forgot the taste of grief ; and supped full of 
horrors, till I have become callous ; nor have I a tear left for an 
event which, five years ago, would have bowed down my head 
to the earth. It seems to me as though I were to experience 
in ray youth the greatest misery of age. My friends fall round 
me, and I shall be left a lonely tree before I am withered. 

" Other men can always take refuge in their families ; I 
have no resource but my own reflections, and they present no 
prospect here or hereafter, except the selfish satisfaction of 
siirviving my betters. I am, indeed, very wretched, and you 
will excuse my saying so, as you know I am not apt to cant 
of sensibility." 

But if tears no longer flowed from his eyes, they did from 
his pen ; for it was then he wrote his elegies to " Thyrza," 
whose pathetic sublimity is so Avell characterized by Moore ; 
and that he added those melancholy stanzas in " Childe Har- 
old " on the death of friends, which we find at tha end of the 
second canto. 

" Indeed," he wrote again to Hodgson, " I am growing 
nervous, ridiculously nervous, I can neither read, write, nor 
amuse myself, or any one else. My days are listless, and ray 
nights restless. I have very seldom any society, and when I 
have, I run out of it. At this present writing, there are in 
the next room three ladies, and I have stolen away to write 



The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 593 

this grumbling letter. I don't know that I sha'n't end witli 
insanity, for I find a want of method in arranging my thouglits 
that perplexes me strangely ; but this looks morj; like silliness 
than madness, as Scroope Davies would facetiously remark in 
his consoling manner. I must try the hartshorn of your com- 
])any ; and a session of Parliament would suit me well, any 
thing to cure me of conjugating the accursed verb ennuyerP 

Distractions did come to him, but of a kind to make him 
conjugate verbs equally disagreeable ; for they came caused 
by grief and irritation. In an infamous, ignoble publication, 
called " The Scourge," an anonymous author, probably making 
himself the organ of those who wished to avenge Lord By- 
ron's satires, attacked his birth, and the reputation of his 
mothei", who, despite her faults, was a very respectable, excel- 
lent woman, 

" During the first winters after Lord Byron had returned 
to England," says Mr. Gait, " I was frequently with him. At 
that time, the sl^'ongest feeling by which he appeared to be 
actuated was indignation against a writer in a scurrilous pub- 
lication, called ' Tlie Scourge,' in which he was not only treat- 
ed with unjustifiable maliguity, but charged with being, as he 
told me himself, the illegitimate son of a murderer. I had not 
read the work ; but the writer who could make such an ab- 
surd accusation, must have been strangely ignorant of the 
very circumstances fi-om which he derived the materials of 
his own libel. When Lord Byron mentioned the subject to 
me, and that he was consulting Sir Vicary Gibbs with the in- 
tention of prosecuting the publisher and the author, I advised 
him, as well as I could, to desist simjjly because the allega- 
tions referred to well-known occurrences. LCis grand-uncle's 
duel with Mr. Chaworth, and the order of the House of Peers 
to produce evidence of his grandfather's marriage with Miss 
Trevannion, the facts of which being matter of history and 
public record, superseded the necessity of any proceeding. 

" Knowing how deeply this affair agitated him at that 
time, I was not surprised at the sequestration in which he 
held himself, and which made those who were not acquainted 
with his shy and mystical nature apply to him the descrip- 
tion of his own ' Lara.' "* 

* Gait, p. 105. 



59tl: The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 

Lord Byron's conduct at this period, led those who did not 
know his timid mystery-loving nature, to fancy that they rec- 
ognized him Jn the portrait drawn of " Lara." Probably they 
were imaware how his hard fate was now not sparing him one 
single grief or mortification ; how he was struggling between 
the necessity of j^uttiug up Newstead for sale and the extreme 
repugnance he felt to such a step. 

" Before his resolve was taken on this head," says Mr. Gait, 
" he was often so troubled in mind, as to be unable to hide 
his sadness ; and he often spoke of leaving England forever," 

Already, long absence had made him lose sigh t^ of several 
early comrades ; his mother was dead, and he scarcely saw 
his sister, who lived in quite another circle ; through his ante- 
cedents, his youth, and his travels abroad, he was still a stran- 
ger among his fellow-peers ; the only persons he saw much of 
were five or six college friends, whom death had spared, and 
to whom he was extremely attached ; but they were his sole 
affections. His ideal standard of perfection which, being 
brought in contact with reality, had always a little spoilt wom- 
en for him, had ended by making them almost disagreeable. 

"I have one request to make^" wrote he at this time to 

H , " never again sj^eak to me in your letters of a woman ; 

do not even allude to the existence of the sex. I will not so 
much as read a word about them ; it must be propria que 
marihusP 

It was in this state of relative isolation that he came to 
London, about the end of the year, and found Dallas preparing 
to have " Childe Harold " published ; a task in w^hich Lord 
Byron half unwillingly joined. 

" He seemed more inclined," says Dallas, " at that time to 
seek more solid fame, by endeavoring to become an active, 
eloquent statesman." 

But, notwithstanding this perspective, despite his genius 
and his youth, Lord Byron often fell into a sort of mental 
prostration, which was, says Dallas again, " rather the result 
of his particular situation^ feeling himself out of his sphere, 
than that of a gloomy disposition received from nature." 

We have seen, in effect, that there were circumstances -then 
existing well calculated to darken his noble brow, and give 
him those nervous movements that may have seemed like 



The Melancholy of Loud Byron. 595 

eupvice to those who wove ignorant of their cause ; and I 
wished to enter into these details so as to characterize well 
the epoch when his melancholy was greatest, and to show that 
it had its chief source in the anguish of his heart. It was to 
this time he alluded, when, in other days of suffering (at the 
period of his separation from Lady Byron), wherein his heart 
had smaller share, he wrote to Moore : — " If my heart could 
have broken, it would have done so years ago, through events 
more afflicting than this." 

I also wished to enter into these details, because, desiring 
to prove that Lord Byron's melancholy almost always arose 
from palpable causes, it was necessary to make these causes 
known; and thus those who have declared his griefs to be 
rather imaginary than real, may find in this chapter abun- 
dant reason for rectifying their ideas. Among the number 
of such persons we may rank Mr. Macaulay, the eloquent his- 
torian, whose opinion, however, has no loeight, as regards 
Lord Byron's character. For it is evident that he made use 
of this great name by way of choosing a good theme for his 
eloquence, a sort of mould for fine phrases. Besides, Macaulay 
did not know Lord Byron personally, nor did he study him 
impartially ; facts which are his fault and his excuse. 

After having paid this great tribute to gi-ief during six 
months, the storm appeared to subside, and a ray of sunshine 
penetrated into Lord Byron's mind. It was then that he 
made Moore's acquaintance, and that of other clever men, 
among whom we may cite Rogers and Campbell. Moore es- 
pecially, introduced under circumstances that brought out 
strongly the most amiable and estimable qualities of heart 
and mind, was to Lord Byron as a beacon-light amid the 
clouds external and internal harassing him then ; and their 
sympathy was mutual and instantaneous. Lord Byron wrote 
directly to Harness : — 

"Moore is the epitome of every thing exquisite in poetic 
and personal perfections." 

On his side, Moore, after having praised the manly, gener- 
ous, pleasing refinement of his new friend, sums up by saying : 
— '^ Frank and manly as I found his nature then, so did J ever 
find it to his latest hour.'''' And in describing the effect pro- 
duced on him by his first meeting with Lord Byron, he says : — 



596 The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 

^^ Among the imj^ressions mhich this meeting left upon me, 
what I chiefly remember to have remarhed was the nobleness 
of his air, his beauty, the gentleness of his voice and manners. 
Being in mourning for his mother, the color, as well of his 
dress as of his glossy, cnrling, and picturesque hair, gave more 
effect to the pure, spiritual paleness of his features, in the ex- 
pression of which, when he spoke, there was a perpetvial play 
of lively thought, though melancholy was their habitual char- 
acter when in repose." 

But this melancholy, having become habitual to him through 
accident, began then to disperse, as snow melts beneath the 
soft and warm breath of spring. The first symptom was that 
he judged better of himself; for, writing to his friend Har- 
ness, to express his general opinion on human selfishness, he 
said, " But I do not think we are born of this disposition." 

" From the time of our first meeting," says Moore, " there 
seldom elapsed a day that Lord Byron and I did not see each 
other, and our acquaintance ripened into j^itimacy and friend- 
ship with a rajDidity of which I have seldom known an exam- 
ple."* 

Moore's company was a great consolation to him then, and 
Providence willed that the first balsam applied to his wounds, 
after that of time, should come from the hand of one whom 
he had lashed in his satire. He passed in this way the last 
months of 1811, and the first two of the following year. 
Meanwhile his star was about to rise, soon to transform, with- 
out any transition, his misty sky into brightest light, too daz- 
zling, alas ! to endure. For the sun, Avhen it shines so radi- 
antly in early morning, absorbs too many bad vapors. But 
we Avill not anticijDate events which I am not relating here. 

The parliamentary session being opened. Lord Byron re- 
sumed his seat in the upper House. But he was only known 
there by the satire that had raised him tip such a host of ene- 
mies ; otherwise, the handsome young man who had come 
among them three years befoi-e, but who had since appeared 
to disdain their labors, preferring foreign travel in Spain and 
the East, was scarcely remembered. When they saw him re- 
turn, still so young and handsome, but with a grave melan- 
clioly brow, and that ho immediately distinguished himself as 
* Moore, Letter 81. 



The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 597 

an orator, general admiration was excited. Even tho.se lie 
had oftentled generously forgot their anger in sympathy for a 
fellow-countryman, and pride in such a colleague ; pride and 
enthusiasm were so general that both parties, Tories and 
Whigs, shared it equally. Lord Holland told him that as an 
orator he would beat them all, if he 2^G'>'severed. Lord Gren- 
ville remarked that for the construction of his phrases he al- 
ready resembled Burke. Sir Francis Burdett declared that 
his discourse was the best pronounced by a lord in parliament- 
ary memory. Several other noblemen asked to be presented, 
and even those he had offended came round to shake hands. 
Generous natures showed themselves on this occasion. The 
success of the orator heralded that of the poet, for " Childe 
Harold " appeared a few days after. 

"The effect W'as," said Moore, " accordingly electric; his 
fame had not to wait for any of the ordinary gradations, but 
seemed to spring up like the palace of a fairy tale, in a night. 
As he himself briefly described it in his memoranda : — ' I 
awoke one morning, and found myself famous.' 

" The first edition of his work was disposed of instantly ; 
and, as the echoes of its reputation multiplied on all sides, 
' Childe Harold ' and ' Lord Byron ' became the theme of every 
tongue. At his door most of the leaditig names of the day 
presented themselves. From morning till night the most flat- 
tering testimonies of his success crowded his table from the 
grave tributes of the statesman and the philosopher down to 
(what flattered him still more) the romantic billet of some in- 
cognita, or the pressing note of invitation from some fair lead- 
er of fashion ; and, in place of the desert which London had 
been to him but a few weeks before, he now not only saAV the 
whole splendid interior of high life thrown open to receive 
him, but found himself among its illustrious crowds the most 
distinguished object." 

I may also mention Dallas, who in speaking of this unex- 
ampled success, says : — 

"Lord Byron had become the subject of every conversa- 
tion in town. 

" He was surrounded with honors. From the regent and 
his admirable daughter, down to the editor and his clerk ; 
from Walter Scott and Jeffrey down to the anonymous au- 



598 The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 

thors of the ' Satirist ' and the ' Scourge,' all and each extoll- 
ed his merits. He was the admiration of the old, and the 
marvel of the fashionable circles of which he had become the 
idol." 

This adoration of a whole nation did not turn his head, 
but it touched and rejoiced his heart. When he knew him- 
self forgiven and loved by those even Avhom he had most of- 
fended in his satire, toward whom he felt most gnilty, as, for 
instance, the excellent Lord Holland, who asked for his friend- 
ship, predicting his future fame as an orator, and already plac- 
ing him beside Walter Scott as a poet ; then by Lord Fitz- 
gerald, Avho declared himself incapable of feeling angry with 
" Childe Harold," and many, many others ; when all this oc- 
curred, Lord Byron's heart expanded to the better feelings 
he had long kept under control and hidden. He gave way to 
his innate kindness, to generous forgiveness ; his own good 
qualities were stimulated by the kindness and generosity of 
others ; this, rather than any satisfaction of self-love, dispelled 
the clouds from his soul, changed the sky and atmosphere, 
and his melancholy of that period, which owed its source to 
the heart, became neutralized by the heartfelt satisfaction he 
experienced. His letters, and particularly those to Moore, are 
full of life and animation at this time ; and such as he appear- 
ed in his letters, such did Moore describe him in his habitual 
frame of mind. Dallas, who before had so often seen him 
melancholy, says : — 

" I am happy to think that the success with which he has 
met, and the object of universal attention which he has become, 
have already produced upon his soul that softening influence 
which I had expected and foreseen ; and I trust, that all his 
former grief will now have passed forever." 

Gait himself, despite the effort he seems to make in prais- 
ing him, can not help owning that at this period, when every 
body was kind to Lord Byron, he, on his side, displayed the 
utmost gentleness, kindness, amiability, and desire of obliging, 
combined with habitual gayety and pleasantry. The general 
tone of his memoranda at this time, particularly in 1813, shows 
him pleased with every body and every thing. 

After having praised Moore, he speaks highly of Lord 
Ward, afterward Lord Dudley : — 



The Melancholy of Lord Byron, 599 

" I like Ward," he says, and adds, " by Mohammed ! I be- 
gin to fear getting to like every body ; a disposition not to be 
encouraged. It is a sort of social gluttony, that makes one 
swallow all one comes in contact Avith. But I do like Ward." 

Ne\'ertheless, this serenity, by lasting over the interval that 
elapsed between his tw^enty-third and twenty-sixth year, at 
which period his marriage took place, was traversed by many 
clouds, more or less evanescent, and he still had hours and 
days of melancholy. Assuredly, Lord Byron could not avoid 
those oscillations of heart and mind that belong to the very 
essence of the human heart. But, at least, it is easy to assign 
a palpable cause for all the fits of ennui or melancholy experi- 
enced at this time. All his tendencies then show indifference, if 
not dislike, to female society. His ideal of perfection had spoilt 
him for Avomen,in the tirst instance, and the unfortunate expe- 
rience he had of them still further lowered his opinion of them. 
But if he did not care about them, it was presumptuous to 
think he could put aside the sex altogether. 

By adopting an anchorite's regimen, he strengthened, it is 
true, the spiritual part of his nature; and certainly seemed to 
believe his heart would be satisfied with friendship. His ac- 
quaintance with Moore, esj)ecially, gave to his daily existence 
the intellectual and spiritual aliment so necessary to him. 
But he reckoned on setting Avoman aside, and his presumptu- 
ous heart numbered only twenty-three summers ! Among the 
letters and tokens of homage that piled his table in those days 
figured many rose-colored notes, written on gilt-edged per- 
fumed paper. Such incense easily ascends, and it was not sur- 
prising that his head should also suffer. " Childe Harold," of 
course, acted most on the imagination of women of poAverful 
intellect and ardent nature, and thus his own peril grew afresh, 
involuntarily evoked by himself. For, if the prestige of po- 
sition and circumstance adding lustre to genius, could act 
strongly even upon men, what must have been their combined 
influence when added to his personal beauty, itpon women ? — 

" . . . . These personal influences acted with increased 
force, from the assistance derived from others, Avhich, to fe- 
male imaginations especially, would have presented a sufficien- 
cy of attraction, even without the great qualities joined with 
tliem. His yoxith, the noble beauty of his countenance, and 



600 The Melancholy of Lord Byron, 

its constant play of light and shadow — the gentleness of his 
voice and manner to women, and his occasional haughtiness 
to men, — the alleged singularities of his mode of life, whicli 
kept curiosity constantly alive ; all these minor traits concur- 
red toward the quick spread of his fame ; nor can it be denied 
that, among many purer sources of interest in his poem, the 
allusions which he makes to instances of ' successful passion ' 
in his career, were not without their influence on the fancies 
of that sex whose weakness it is to be most easily won by 
those who come recommended by the greatest number of tri- 
umphs over others Altogether, taking into considera- 
tion the various points I have here enumerated, it raay be as- 
serted, that there never before existed, and, it is inost proba- 
ble, there never will exist again, a conibitiation of such vast 
mentcd powers and such genius, icith so many other of those 
advantages and attractions by which the world is in general 
dazzled and captivated.'''' 

This rare combination of advantages were so many means 
of seduction on his side, involuntarily exercised, and the sole 
ones he would have condescended to employ; meanwhile all 
advances were spared him on the othei*. There were fine la- 
dies whom nothing daunted, if only they could find favor in 
his sight; who forgot for him their rank, their duties, their 
families, braving the whole world, donning strange costumes 
to get at him, carrying jealousy to the verge of madness, to 
attempted suicide, or to the conception, at least, of crime. 
One distinguished herself by excessive daring ; another, who 
had not been happy in married life, but who had tried to 
make up for want of affection by securing her husband's friend- 
ship and esteem, was now willing to sacrifice all to her wild 
passion for the youthful peer. 

Whatever the sentiment which in his breast responded to 
all the feelings he excited, it is certain that they possessed, at 
least, the power of disturbing his tranquillity. They were 
like so many beautiful plants, all showy and perfumed, yet 
distilling poison. The Avonian whose passion he bore with, 
rather than shared, could not fail to compromise him ; they 
had exchanged parts, so to say, and he had to suffer from that 
jealousy, which more frequently falls to the lot of woman. 
The ennui he thus experienced was tinctured with irritation, 



The Melancholy of Lokd Byhox. OOl 

while the emotions to which the other lady gave rise, Avere 
softer, truer, and more ardent. If we examine well his mem- 
oranda and confidential letters of this time, and confront his 
expressions with facts, we shall always find therein the cause 
and palpable explanation of those mysterious though short- 
lived sadnesses then experienced. We shall find the expres- 
sion of peace sacrificed, or • sadness produced, sometimes 
couched in language indicative of affection or regret ; then, 
again, in words that betray fear or irritation. For instance, 
we read in a passage of his memoranda : — 

" 1 wish I could settle to reading, again, — my life is monot- 
onous, and yet desultory. I take up books, and. fling them 
down again. I began a comedy, and burnt it, because the 
scene ran into reality ; a novel, for the same reason. In rhyme, 
I can keep more away from facts ; but the thought always runs 
thi'ough, through Yes, yes ; through." ' 

And we have in these two words the precise explanation 
of this feeling of ennui. 

He was at this time contemplating a voyage : — 

" Ward talks of going to Holland, and we have partly dis- 
cussed an expedition together And why not ? 

is far away No one else, except Augusta (his sister), 

cares for me — no ties — no trammels — andiamo dunque — se 
torniamo bene — se no che importa ?"* 

He was evidently sad that day ; but, is not the nature of 
his sadness revealed in those words : — " She is far away — ?" 

According to his memoranda, he again fell into this vein 
of sadness some months later, in February, 1814; but then, 
also, its causes are very evident. An accumulation of painful 
things, united to overwhelm him. He had sought to satisfy 
the longings of his heart by extraordinary intellectual activity, 
writing the " Bride of Abydos " in four nights, and the " Cor- 
sair " in a few days ; he had also fought against them, by en- 
deavoring to make a six months' journey into Holland; but 
this project failed, from obstacles created by a friend who 
was to accompany him; and, besides, the plague was then 
prevalent in the East ; he was, moreover, embarrassed with 
the difficulty of selling Newstead, and the necessity of such a 
painful measure ; all which circumstances united to keep him 

* " Jacopo Ortis," Ugo Foscolo. 

Cc; 



602 The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 

in England. And a host of other irritating annoyances, the 
work of irreconcilable enemies, who were jealous of his success 
and his sujieriority, then fell upon him, as they could not fail 
to do ; for his sun had risen too brightly not to call forth nox- 
ious vapors. 

After having passed a month away from London, he wrote 
in his memoranda: — 

" I see all the j^apers are in a sad commotion with those 
eight lines You have no conception of the ludicrous so- 
lemnity with which these two stanzas have been treated, .... 
of the ujjroar the lines on the little ' Royalty's Weeping,' in 
1812 (now -republished) have occasioned. The ' Morning Post ' 
gave notice of an intended motion in the House of my brethren 

on the subject, and God knows Avhat proceedings besides 

This last piece of intelligence is, I presume, too laughable to 
be true, etc., etc."* 

The first blow to his popularity was now given ; and soon 
the whole nation rose up in arms against him. All jealousies, 
and all resentments now ranged themselves under one hostile 
banner, distorting Lord Byron's every word, calumniating his 
motives, making his most generous and noble actions serve as 
pretexts for attack; reproaching him with having given up 
enmities from base reasons (while he had done so in reality 
from feelings of justice and gratitude), pretendingf that he 
had pocketed large sums for his poems, and rendering him 
responsible for the follies women chose to commit about him. 
This war, breaking out against him like an unexpected hurri- 
cane amid radiant sunshine, must naturally have caused irrita- 
tion. And if Ave add to it the embarrassment of his affairs, 
the deplorable events in his opinion then going on in the 
world, the fall of the great NajDoleon, whom he admired, the 
invasion of France by the Allied Powers, which he disapproved 
of, the policy pursued by his country, and the evils endured 
by humanity — spectacles that always made his heart bleed, — 
we may well understand hoAv all these causes may have given 
rise to some moments of misanthropy, such as are betrayed 
by a few expressions in his journal ; but it was a misanthropy 
that existed only in words, a j^lant Avithout roots, of ephemeral 
groAvth, and most natural to a fine nature. We feel, notAvith- 

* Moore, Letter 166. t I^id. 



The Melancholy of Lokd Bykon. 603 

standing all these real palpable causes of ennui, that his princi- 
pal sufferings still came from the heart. 

"Lady Melbourne," writes Lord Byron in his memoranda, 
in 1814, " tells me that it is said that I am ' much out of spirits.' 
I wonder if I am really or not? I have certainly enough of 
^ that perilous stuff which weighs upon the hearty and it is 
better they should believe it to be the resxdt of these attacks than 
that they should guess the real caused 

Aud this real cause was a grief he wished to keep» secret. 
Separation from friends, their departure, even when he was to 
meet them again, likewise caused, him sadness. Especially 
was this the case with regard to Moore, whom he loved so 
much, aud whose society had an unspeakable charm for him : — 
" I can only repeat," he said, " that I wish you would either re- 
main a long time with us, or not come at all, for these snatch- 
es of society make the subsequent sef)arations bitterer than 
ever."* 

And in the next letter he says : — " I could be very senti- 
mental now, but I won't. The truth is, that I have been all 
my life trying to harden my heart, and have not yet quite suc- 
ceeded — though there are great hoj)es — and you do not know 
how it sunk with your departure." 

This influence is ever visible. The English climate was al- 
ways distasteful to him, and its fogs disjDleased him more since 
he had revelled in the splendor of Eastern suns ; moreover, 
mists grew darker and colder when his imagination was still 
more influenced by his heart. At those moments his first 
thought ever was — "Z^et me depart, let me seek a bright sun, 
a blue sky.'''' When to his great regret, the East was closed 
against him by the plague of 1813, in his disdain for northern 
countries, he exclaimed : — 

" Give me a sun, I care not how hot, and sherbet, I care not 
how cool, and my heaven is as easily made as your Persian's." 
Making allusions to this verse — 

"^ Persian's hearen is easily made, — 
^Tis hut black eyes and lemonade." 

But we know that he was thinking of this voyage, in order 
to divert his mind from the regret of having beQU obliged, 

* Moore, Letters 183 and 18-1. 



GO-i The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 

from motives of honor and prudence, to give up accompany- 
ing into Sicily a family he liked very much. However, the 
sight of a camel sufficed to carry him back to Asia and the 
Euxine Sea, and to make him cry out : " Quando te asjnciam ,/" 

It was also at this time that he Avrote to Moore, " All con- 
vulsions with me end in rhyme." To overcome certain agita- 
tions of heart, he wrote the " Bride of Abydos," and directly 
afterward the " Corsair." 

But if the melancholy, more or less deep, that cast its 
shadows over this brilliant period of his triumphs, wore spe- 
cially the above character, it changed somewhat after his mar- 
riage. Thenceforward his melancholy sprang less from the 
heart, than from bitter disenchantment ; from the suffering of 
a proud nature, cruelly wounded in its sentiment of justice by 
indignities, calumnies, persecutions, unexampled vmder such 
circumstances. Having already spoken of this marriage, I 
shall leave to regular biographers the detailed account of this 
painful period, so as only to consider it here under the sole as- 
pect of the griefs it caused. I will not even stop to mention 
the unaccountable melancholy occasioned by a presentiment 
before marriage, nor the mysterious sort of agony that seized 
upon him jxist as he was about to kneel for the nuptial cere- 
mony in church, nor even the sadness brought about by his 
first experience of the disposition of the person with whom he 
had so imprudently linked his fate. I will say, rather, that 
the melancholy caused and produced by this marriage was re- 
ally grief ; and of the kind that most harshly tries, not only 
firmness of soul, but likewise true virtue. For all the base- 
ness, cowardice and spirit of revenge that had lain hidden a 
moment while his triumphal car passed on, united at this mo- 
ment to overwhelm and cast him down. And the means em- 
ployed were instinct with such perversity, that his great moral 
courage, always so powerful in helping him to bear contra- 
dictions, disapjDointments, and personal misfortunes, were no 
longer of any assistance, threatened as he was with the great- 
est calamity that can possibly befall a man of honor — namely, 
to be misjudged, calumniated, accused, thought capable of 
deeds quite contrary to his high nature. Neither his courage, 
firmness, nor even the testimony of conscience could shield 
. him from great unha})piness. And he suffered all the more 



The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 605 

tliat the blame incurred proceeded from wortliy persons wlio 
had been mischievously led into error ; nor could he conceal 
from himself that he had voluntarily contributed to produce 
this unhappy state of things, by not sufficiently avoiding cer- 
tain appearances, by not attaching sufficient importance to the 
opinion of his fellow-men, and having lent himself, too easily, 
to misinterpretation. ^ 

" The thorns which I have reaped," said he later (but he 
thought it much earlier), "are of the tree I planted, — they 
have torn me, — and I bled ; I should have known what fruit 
would spring from such a seed."* 

In addition to all this, Lord Byron had to experience the 
effects of a phenomenon of a terrible character, a phenomenon 
almost peculiar to England, the tyrannical power of its piiblic 
opinion. This power, that gives form and movement to what 
is called the great world in England, weighed so heavily on 
the weak minds of several persons calling themselves friends, 
that, with few exceptions, and though all the while persuaded 
of the injustice of such opinion, after a few feeble efforts at 
changing it, and showing the wrong done to Lord Byron, they 
lost courage to declare their belief. Not only did they no 
longer protest, but they even pretended to believe part of the 
stupid calumnies spread abroad. To a heart firm and devoted 
as his, which, under similar circumstances, would have fought 
to the death in defense of outraged justice and a persecuted 
friend, this was one of the most cruel trials imposed on him 
by adverse destiny. What he must have suffered at this pe- 
riod has been already spoken of in another chapter. I will 
only say here, that, despite time, and the philosophy, which, 
subsequently, restored partial serenity, this-wound never quite 
closed, since, even in the fourteenth canto of " Don Juan," 
Avritten shortly before his last journey into Greece, he still 
made allusion to it, saying ironically : — 

"Without a friend, what were humanity, 

To hunt our errors up with a good grace ? 
Consoling us with — 'Would you had thought twice! 
Ah! if you had but followed in}' advice!' 
O Job! you had but two friends: one's quite enough, 
Especially when we are ill at ease." 

* "Childc Harold, "canio iv. 



606 The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 

Moore adds : — " Lord Byron could not have said, at this 
time, whether it was the attacks of his enemies, or the con- 
dolences of his friends that most lacerated his heart." 

It was in this state of mintl that he quitted England. He 
visited Belgium, and its battle^plains, still coming across fields 
of blood ; went up the Rhine, and spent some months in 
Switzerland, where the glaciers, precipices, and the Alps, pre- 
sented him with a s^Dlendid framework for new poems. All 
the melancholy to be found in " Childe Harold" (third canto), 
in " Manfred," and in his memoi-anda at that time, is evident- 
ly caused by grief, either of fresh occurrence or renewed by 
memory. A smile still sometimes wreathed his lip ; but, when 
the gayety natural to his age and disposition would fain have 
taken possession of his heart, the remembrance of all the in- 
dignities he had undergone, rose up before him as the words 
Mene, Mene, Tekel, XIpharsin, did to JBelshazzar. And often 
his fit of gayety ended in a sigh, which even became habitual 
after it had ceased to express sorrow. All those who knew 
Lord Byron have remarked this singular and touching sigh, 
attributing it to a melancholy temj^erament. But it was es- 
pecially produced by a croAvd of painful indistinct remem- 
brances, intruding upon him at some moment when he would 
and could have been happy. So he has told us in those ex- 
quisite lines of his fourth canto of " Childe Harold ;" and he 
often repeated the same in prose. Thus, for instance, at the 
time of his excursions to Mont Blanc and the Glaciers, which, 
had his heart been lighter, would have made him so happy, he 
finished his memoranda with these melancholy words : — 

"In the weather for this tour (of thirteen days) I have 
been very fortunate — fortunate in a companion (Hobhouse), 
fortunate in our j^rospects, and exempt from even the little 
petty accidents and delays which often render journeys in a 
less wild country disappointing. I was disposed to be pleased. 
I am a lover of nature, and an admirer of beauty. I can bear 
fatigue, and welcome privation, and have seen some of the no- 
blest views in the world. But, in all this, the recollection of 
bitterness, and more esj^ecially of recent and, more, home des- 
olation — which must accompany me through life — have prey- 
ed upon me here ; and neither the music of the shepherd, the 
crashing of the avalanche, nor the torrent, the mountain, the 



The Melancholy of Lord Byron. GOT 

glacier, the forest, nor the cloud, have for one moment lighten- 
ed the weight upon my lieiirt, nor eniibled me to lose my own 
wretched identity in the majesty and the j^ower and the glory 
around, above, and beneath me." 

After having passed eleven months in Switzerland, in about 
the same frame of mind, he crossed the Alps, and entered 
Italy. Who can breathe the soft air of that beautiful land, 
without feeling a healing balm descend on wounds within ? 
The clear atmosphere, and the serene sky, were to him like the 
indulgent caresses of a sister, bringing a hope — a promise — 
that peace, and even happiness were about to visit his stricken 
soul. His first halt was at Milan. There he met with sym- 
pathetic, noble minds, instead of the envious, hypocritical, in- 
tolerant spirits that had caused him so much suffering ; sweet 
and pleasant was it for him to live with such. Every even- 
ing he took his place in a box at the Scala, where the flower 
of the young intellects of Milan assembled, and where he met 
with other persons of note, such as Abbe de Breme and Silvio 
Pellico : gentle, beautiful souls, burning with love of country, 
and sighing after its independence. From them he learnt more 
than ever to detest the humiliating yoke of foreign despotism 
that weighed on Italy ; with the independence and frankness 
of character that belonged to him, he did not scruple to deplore 
it openly ; and his imprudent generosity became a source of 
annoyance, persecution and calumny for himself. There he 
heard that passionate music which appeals so strongly to im- 
agination and heart, because it harmonizes so naturally with all 
its surroundings in Italy. It was listening to this music, at 
times so pathetic and sweet, that emotion would often lend 
almost supernatural beauty to his countenance, so that even 
Mr. Stendhall, the least enthusiastic of men, was wont to say 
with enthusiasm, that nevej; hi his lohole Ufe^ had he seen any 
thing so beautiful and ex^yressive as Lord JSyron's look, or 
so sublime as his style of beauty. There he gave himself 
freely up to all the fine emotions that art can raise. Stend- 
hall accompanied him to the Brera Museum, " a7id I admired^'' 
says he, " the depth of sentiment toith which Lord Byron un- 
derstood jjainters oftnost opposite schools, Raphael, Guereino, 
Luini, Titian. Guercino''s picture of Hagar dismissed by 
Abraham quite electrified him, and, froin that moment the 



608 The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 

admiruUoii he inspired rendered every body mute around 
him.'''' 

" He improvised for at least an hour, and even better than 
Madame de Stael," says Stendhall again. " One day Monti 
was invited to recite before Lord Byron one of his (Monti's) 
poems which had met in Italy with most favor, — the first 
canto of the ' Mascheroniana.' " The reading of these lines 
gave such intense pleasure to the author of " Childe Harold " 
that Stendhall adds, he shall never forget the divine expression 
of his countenance on that occasion. " It was," says he, " the 
placid air of genius and power." 

Thus taking interest and pleasure in all around him, if he 
did experience hours of melancholy (which is very probable, 
his wounds being so recent and so deep), he had, at the same 
time, strength to hide it from the public eye, and to expi-ess it 
only with his pen. 

The single symptom that might be considered to betray, at 
this time, a continual malady of soul, was the indifference he 
showed toward the fair ladies of Milan, who, on their side, 
Avere full of enthusiasm about him, and with whom he refused 
to become acquainted, despite all their advances. But this 
reserve (though probably more marked and commented on 
at this particular moment of which we speak) belonged, never- 
theless to his nature. After having visited Lake Garda with 
that pleasure he always experienced from the beauties of na- 
ture, and then the tomb of Juliet at Verona, with the interest 
excited by a true story even more than by Shakspeare's po- 
etry (since he could only take real interest in what was true), 
he went from Milan to Venice. I have mentioned in another 
chapter the impression made on him by Venice in particular, 
and Italy in general ; how, aided by exterior circumstances, by 
the sympathies growing up around him, the severe studies he 
underwent, so as to keep his heart calm, and bridle an imagina- 
tion too liable to be influenced by bitter memories ; in a few 
months he began a new existence there, with a more vigorous 
and healthy impulse for his genius. 

When first victimized by the most senseless persecution, 
he was so surprised and confounded by the noise and violence 
of calumny, that his keen sentiment of injustice underwent a 
sort of numbness. On seeing himself thus brutally attacked 



The MELANCiTOLy of Lord Bykon. 609 

on the one hand, and so feebly defended on the other, by hike- 
warm, pusillauinious friends, he may have questioned if he 
Averc not really in fault, and hesitated, perhaps, how to reply ; 
for he almost spoke of himself as guilty in the farewell ad- 
dressed to his cold-hearted wife, and also in the lines composed 
for his more deserving sister. This situation of mind shows 
itself without disguise, sadly deiHCted in the third canto of 
" Childe Harold." Manfred himself, that wondrous concep- 
tion of genius, whose lot was cast amid all the sublimities of 
nature, despite his pride and his strength of will, yet was made 
to wear the sackcloth of penance. But, on arriving at Venice 
when months had rolled on, and the Alps were between him 
and the injustice undergone, — after Lady Byron's nev\^, incred- 
ible, and strange refusal to return, — he felt his conscience dis- 
encumbered of all morbid influences. The testimony given, 
the absolution awarded by this impartial, incorruptible judge, 
whom he had never ceased tb consult, became sufiicient for 
him. And by degrees, as he succeeded in forgetting, so as to 
have power to forgive, peace and tranquillity revisited his 
mind. Venice was the city of his dream ; he had known her, 
he said, ere he visited her, and after the East she it was that 
haunted his imagination. Reality spoiled nothing of his 
dream ; he loved every thing about her, — the solemn gayety 
of her gondolas, the silence of her canals, the late hours of her 
.theatres and soirees, the movement and animation reigning on 
St. Mark's, where the gay world nightly assembled. Even 
the decay of the town (w^hich saddened him later), harmoniz- 
ing then with the whole scene, was not displeasing. He re- 
gretted the old costumes given up ; but the Carnival, though 
waning, still recalled ancient Venice, and rejoiced his heart. 
Familiar with the Italian language, he took pleasure in study- 
ing, also, the Venetian dialect, the naivete and softness of 
which charmed him, especially on woman's lips. Stretched 
in his gondola, he loved to court the breezes of the Adriatic, 
especially at twilight and moonlit hours, unrivalled for their 
splendor in Venice, In summer and autumn he delighted to 
give the rein to his horse along the solitary banks of the 
Lido, or beside the flower-enamelled borders of the Brenta. 
He loved the simplicity of the women, the freedom from hy- 
pocrisy of the men. P^eeling himself liked by those among 

Cc2 



610 The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 

whom chance or choice had thrown hhn, frequenting theatres 
and society that could both amuse and instruct, though pow- 
erless to fill his thoughts, for these latter required more sub- 
stantial food, and some hard diflicult study to occupy them, 
being free from all disquieting passions, and wishing to remain 
thus, sociable as he was by temperament, though loving soli- 
tude for the sake of his genius ; under all these circumstances, 
he could satisfy, in due pro^jortion, the double exigency of his 
nature ; for he lived, as we have seen, amid a small circle of 
sympathetic acquaintances, and of friends arriving from En- 
gland, who clustered round him without interfeinng with the 
independence he had regained, and which formed the natural 
necessary element for his mind ; though he had been deprived 
of it in England by the cant and pusillanimity of his friends. 
If, then, he was not exactly happy at this time, at least he was 
on the road leading to happiness. For he was beginning to make 
progress in the path of philosophy, — a gentle, indulgent, gen- 
erous philosophy, as deep as it was clever and pleasing, and 
which afterward ruled his life, and inspired his genius. All 
those who saw him at this period ai*e unanimous in saying 
that melancholy then held aloof from him. In all his letters 
we find proof of the same. " Venice and I go on well togeth- 
er," wrote he to Murray. 

And elsewhere, — " I go out a great deal, and am very well 
pleased." 

Mr. Rose, who visited him at Venice, in the sj^ring of 1818, 
began a poem which he addressed to him from Albano, where 
he was taking baths for his health, by alluding to the gayety 
which Byron spread around him at the reunions which he liked. 

But while those living near him, and at Venice, where his 
poetry was not known, would never have imagined him to be 
melancholy, in England and other places where people read 
the sorrow-breathing creations of his genius, he continued to 
be considered the very personification of melancholy or mis- 
anthropy. He knew, and laughed about it sometimes. • 

"*I suppose now I shall never be able to shake off my 
sable, in public imagination, more particularly since my mor- 
al wife demolished my repiitation. However, not that, nor 
more than that, has yet extinguished my spirit, which always 
rises with the rebound." 



The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 611 

And as he did not wish to be considered a misanthrope, 
he added to Moore, in tlie same letter : — 

" I Avish you would also tell Jeffrey what you know, — that 
I was not, and indeed, am not, even noic, the misanthropical 
and gloomy gentleman for which he takes me, but a facetious 
companion, getting on well with those with whom I am inti- 
mate, and as loquacious and laughing as if I were a much 
cleverer fellow." 

And at the same time, to disabuse the public also, and 
show that he could write gayly, he set himself to study a kind 
of poetry thoroughly Italian in its spirit, and of Avhich Berni 
is the father ; poetry replete with wit, and somewhat free, but 
devoid of malice, even when it merges from gayety into saf- 
ire ; a style unknown to England in its varied shades, and 
which it was easier for him to introduce than to make popu- 
lar. " Beppo " was his first essay in this line, and it contains 
too much genuine fun not to have been a natural product of 
liis humor ere flowing from his pen. 

On sending it to Murray as a mere sample of the style he 
thought it possible to introduce into the literature of his 
country, he said : — 

"At least, this poem will show that I can Avrite gayly, and 
will repel the accusation of monotony and affectation."* 

But the gayety visible at this period in his writings and 
his conduct was not, however, uninterrupted. For such cheer- 
fulness to be constant, neither a continuation of the causes 
producing it, nor yet the absence of English papers and re- 
views could quite suffice. It was necessary that no letters 
should come, awakening painful remembrances that had slum- 
bei'ed awhile, that there should be no necessity for selling his 
property in England, — a matter always complicated, and diffi- 
cult of execution at a distance, and which forced upon him 
cares and occupations most opposed to his character, while 
affording sad proof of the negligence, ingratitude, and other 
faults of those intrusted with the management of his affairs. 
It would have required that friends who had neglected to 
prevent his departure, should not, when weary of seeing him 
no more, have conspired to bring about his' return, devising a 
good means of so doing by obstacles thrown in the way of a 

* Letter 312. 



012 The Melancholy of Loed Byron. 

successful issue to bis affairs, which happy conclusion was ab- 
solutely necessary for his peace and independence. We see 
by his letters, written during the summer of 1818, that he was 
tormented in a thousand ways ; sometimes not receiving any 
accounts, sometimes being advised to come nearer London, 
then, again, having no tidings of how several thousands had 
been disposed of. Besides that, he had constantly before his 
eyes a spectacle most painful for a generous heart to witness. 
That was Venice choked and exjjiring in the grip of her for- 
eign rulers. The humiliation thus inflicted on the city of his 
dreams, and its noble race of inhabitants, and which was 
every instant repeated and proclaimed by the brutal voice of 
drums and cannons, with a thousand added vexations (neces- 
sary, perhaps, for keeping up an abhorred sway), caused infi- 
nite suffering to his just and liberal nature, raising emotions 
of anger and pitying regret, that flowed from his pen in sub- 
limely indignant language. Thereupon, the despots, unable 
to impose silence upon him, revenged themselves in various 
ways, echoing reports spread in London, and inventing new 
fables, which the idle people of Venice, more idle than else- 
where, and even the gondoliers repeated in their turn to stran- 
gers, to amuse and gain a few pence. We pass over any de- 
tails of the persecution inflicted on him by English tourists, 
who, not actuated by sympathy, but out of sheer curiosity and 
eagerness to pick up all the gossip and idle tales in circula- 
tion, Avere wont to run after Lord Byron, intruding on his 
private w\alks, and even pressing into his very palace. Such 
conduct, of course, displeased him, and accordingly in the sum- 
mer of 1818 we find traces of ill-humor visible in his corre- 
spondence, and even in the first two cantos of " Don Juan." 
Afterward, when he had been laid hold of and absorbed by a 
great passion, his irritation merged into sadness, melancholy, 
disqu.ietude, and irresolution.* 

But if all this proves that sadness wearing the garb of mel- 
ancholy sometimes approached him, even at Venice ; we see 
too clearly its real and accidental causes to be able to ascribe 
it to a permanent and fatal disposition of temperament. 

Many signs of suffering escaped his pen at this time. For 
instance, Avi'iting to Moore from Venice in 1818, and wishing 

* See his "Life in Ital\-.'' 



The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 613 

to give him a })icturesque description of a creature full of 
savage energy, who forced herself upon him in a thousand ex- 
travagant ways, refusing to leave his house, he said : — 

" I like this kind of animal, and am sure that I should have 
preferred Medea to any woman that ever breathed. You may, 
perhaps, wonder at my speaking thus (making allusion to 

Lady Byron) I could have forgiven the dagger or the 

bowl, any thing but the deliberate desolation piled upon me 
when I stood alone upon my hearth with my household gods 

shivered around me Do you suppose I have forgotten 

or forgiven it? It has comparatively SAvallowed up in me 
every other feeling, and I shall remain only a spectator upon 
this earth until some great occasion presents itself, which may 

come yet. There are others more to be blamed than , and 

it is on these that my eyes are fixed unceasingly." 

Meanwhile, until Providence should present him with this 
opportunity, another feeling took involuntary possession of 
liis whole soul. But would not the sentiment which was 
about to swallow up or transform all others, and which was at 
last to bring him some happiness, also destroy the peace so 
carefully preserved in his heart by indifference since he left 
London ? He seemed at first to have dreaded such a result 
himself; for, in one of the earliest letters addressed to the 
person beloved (letters which fully unveil his beautiful soul, 
and where one Avould vainly seek an indelicate or sensual ex- 
pression), he tells her " that he had resolved, on system, to avoid 
a great passion," but that she had put to flight all his resolu- 
tions, that he is wholly hers, and will become all she wishes, 
happy perhaps in her love, but never more at peace, — "ma 
tirmquillo maipiii.^'' 

And he ends the letter with a verse quoted from Guarini's 
" Pastor Fido."* 

His heart assuredly was satisfied, but precisely because he 
truly loved, and felt himself beloved ; therefore did he also 
suffer from the impossibility of reconciling the exigencies of 
his heart with circumstances. In one of these beautiful let- 
ters, so full of simplicity and refinement, he tells her: — 

* "Che giova a te, cor mio, 1' esser amato.? 

Che giova a me 1' aver si cara Amante ? 
Se tu, crudo Destine, ne dividi 
Cio ehe amor ne strintje I" 



614 The Melancholy op Lord Byron. 

" What we shall have to suffer is of common occurrence, 
and we must bear it like many others, for true love is never 
happy ; but Ave two shall suffer still more because we are 
placed in no ordinary circumstances," 

His real sentiments of soul are likewise displayed in that 
beaiitif ul satirical poem, " Don Juan," in the third canto of 
which he exclaims : — 

"Oh, Love! what is it in this world of ours 

Which makes it fatal to be loved ? Ah, why 
With cj'press branches hast thou wreathed th}' bowers. 
And made thy best interpreter a sigh ?" 

Nevertheless, when he had left Venice, which became alto- 
gether distasteful to him, and gone to live at Ravenna, his 
heart grew calmer. To Murray he writes : — 

" You inquire after my health and spirits in large letters ; 
my health can't be very bad, for I cured myself of a sharp 
tertian ague in three weeks, Avith cold water, Avhich had held 
my stoutest gondolier for months, notAvithstanding all the 
bark of the apothecary, — a circumstance which surprised 
D'Aglietti, who said it was a proof of great stamina, particu- 
larly in so epidemic a season. I did it out of dislike to the 
taste of bark (which I can't bear), and succeeded, contrary to 
the prophecies of every body, by simply taking nothing at 
all. As to spirits, they are unequal, now high, now low, — 
like other people's, I suppose, and depending upon circum- 
stances." 

Having groAvn intimate with the Cojmt and Countess 

G , he was requested by the former to accompany his 

yoimg wife into society, to the play, everywhere, in short; 
soon Lord Byron took up his abode in their palace, and the 
repose of heart and mind he thus attained was so great, that 
no sadness seemed able to come near him, as long as this 
tranquil, regular, pleasing sort of existence lasted, and it 
seemed destined to endure forever. 

But nothing is permanent here below, and especially hap- 
piness, be its source regular or irregular ; such is the myste- 
rious eternal law of this earthly life, doubtless one of proba- 
tion. To this period of tranquillity succeeded one of uneasi- 
ness and grief, which ended by aAvakening a little melancholy. 
Let us "examine the causes of it in his position at that time. 



The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 615 

The object of Lord Byron's love had obtained from His 
Holiness Pope Pins VII., at the solicitation of her parents, 
permission to leave her hnsband's house, and return home to 
her family. Consequently she had left in the month of July, 
and was leading a retired life in a country-house belonging to 
her parents. Thus Lord Byron, who had been accustomed to 
feel happy in her society, was now reduced to solitude in the 
same place her presence had gladdened. In order not to com- 
promise her in her delicate position, he was obliged even to 
deny himself the gratification of calling upon her in the coun- 
try. Ravenna, which is always a sad kind of abode, becomes 
in autumn quite a desert, liable to fever. Everybody had gone 
into the country. Even if taste had not inclined Lord Byron 
to be alone, necessity would have compelled it ; for there was 
no longer a single being with whom he could exchange a word 
or a thought. Equinoctial gales again swept the sea; and 
thus the wholesome exercise of swimming, so useful in restor- 
ing equilibrium to the faculties and calming the mind, was 
forbidden. If at least he could have roamed on horseback 
tlirough the foi-est of pines ! But no ; the autumn rains, even 
in this lovely climate, last for weeks. In the absolute solitude 
of a town like Ravenna, imprisoned, so to say, within his own 
apartment, how could he avoid some emotions of sadness ? 
He was thus assailed ; and, as it always happened where he 
himself was concerned, he mistook its causes. Engrossed by 
an affection that was amply returned, feeling strong against 
the injustice of man and the hardships of fate, having become 
well-nigh inaccessible to ennui, he was astonished at the sad- 
ness that always seemed to return in autumn, and imagined 
that it might be from some hereditary malady inherent to his 
temperament. 

" This season kills me with sadness," he wrote to Madame 

G , on the 28th of September ; " when I have my mental 

malady, it is well for others that I keep away. I thank thee, 
from my heart, for the roses. Love me ! My soul is like the 
leaves that fall in autumn, all yellow." 

And then, as if he almost reproached himself with being 
sad without some cause existing in the heart, and, above all, 

not wishing to pain Madame G , he wound up with a joke, 

saying: — " Here is a cantator ;" a conventional word recalling 



616' The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 

some buffooneries in a play, and which signified : — " Here is a 
fine sentence !" 

Certainly, the autumnal season, sad and rainy as it is, must 
have had great influence over him. Could it be otherwise 
with an organization like his ? From this point of view, his 
melancholy, like his temperament, might be considered as he- 
reditary. But would it have been developed without the aid 
of other causes? 

Let us observe the date of the letter, Avlierein he blames 
the season, and the dates of those received from London, or 
those he addressed thither. The coincidence between them 
will show clearly that Avhen he called himself melancholy, and 
accused the season, it occurred precisely on the day when he 
was most wearied and overwhelmed by a host of other dis- 
agreeable things. For instance, Murray, whose answers on 
several points he had been impatiently expecting, was seized 
with a new fit of silence. " There you are at your tricks."* 

And then, when tfie silence was broken, the letters almost 
always brought him disagreeable accounts. Wishing to dis- 
gust him with Italy, they sent him volumes full of unjust, 
stupid attacks on Italy and the Italians whom he liked. 

" These fools," exclaimed he, " will force me to write a 
book myself on Italy, to tell them broadly they have lied.'''' 

Nothing was more disagreeable, and even hurtful to him, 
at this time, than the report of his return to England ; and 
they wrote him word that his presence in London was assert- 
ed on all sides, that many persons declared that they had seen 

him, and that Lady C. L had been to call at his house 

fully persuaded that he was there. f 

"Pray do not let the papers paragraph me back to England. 
They may say what they please, any loathsome abuse but that. 
Contradict it." 

In consequence of this invention, even his newspapers were 
no longer sent to him ; and when he spoke of the harm and 
annoyance thus occasioned, annoyance increased by Murray's 
silence, his displeasure certainly amounted to anger. At this 
time also he was informed by letter that some English tourists, 
on returning home, had boasted that they could have been pre- 
sented to him at Venice, but woidd not. 

* Letter 38G. t ^'ftter P.89. 



The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 617 

The trial of tlie unfortunate queen was just coming on at 
this time, and the whole proceeding, accompanied as it was 
with so many cruel, indecent circumstances, revolted him in 
the highest degree. 

" No one here," said he, " believes a word of all the infa- 
mous depositions made." 

The article in " Blackwood's Magazine," which was so 
abominably libellous as to force him out of the silence he had 
adopted for his rxde, was often present to his thought ; for he 
dreaded lest his editor should for the sake of lucre publish 
" Don Juan " Avith his name, and lest the Noels and other 
enemies, out of revenge, should profit thereby to contest his 
right of guardianship over his child, as had been the case with 
Shelley. 

"Recollect, that if you put my name to 'Don Juan' in 
these canting days, any lawyer might oppose my guardian- 
right of my daughter in chancery, on the plea of its contain- 
ing the parody. Such are the perils of a foolish jest. I was 
not aw"are of this at the time, but you will find it correct, I 
believe ; and you may be sure that the Noels would not let it 
slip. Now, I prefer my child to a poem at any time." 

Moreover, amid all these pre-occupations, Hobhouse wrote 
him word that he should be obliged to go to England for the 
queen's trial ; and w^e know how repugnant this necessity was 
to Lord Byron. His little AUegra had just fallen rather dan- 
gerously ill ; Countess G , notwithstanding the sentence 

pronounced by His Holiness, continued to be tormented by 
her husband, who refused to accej^t the decision of Rome, 
because he did not wish for a separation. The Papal Gov- 
ernment, pushed on by the Austrian police, had recourse to a 
thousaTid small vexatious measures, to make Lord Byron quit 
Ravenna, where he had given offense by becoming too popu- 
lar with the liberal party. 

Lastly, M^e may further add that, even in those days, he 
Avas suffering from some jealous susceptibility, though know- 
ing well how he was beloved. For in the letter, dated 28th of 
September, Avhere he says " his soul is sick," he also com- 
])lains of Madame G 's having passed some hours at Ra- 
venna without letting him know, and of her having thought fit 
to hide from him certain stejis taken. 



618 The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 

This autumn was followed by a winter still more disagreea- 
bly exceptional than the preceding one. The most inclement 
weather prevailed during the month of January, and general- 
ly throughout the winter. 

" Bad weather, this 4th of January," he writes in his mem- 
oranda, " as bad as in London itself." 

The sirocco, a wind that depresses even people without 
nerves, was blowing and melting the ice. The streets and 
roads were transformed into pools of half-congealed mud. He 
was somewhat " out of spirits.'''' But still he hoped : — 

" If the roads and weather allow, I shall go out on horse- 
back to-morrow. It is high time ; already we have had a 
week of this work : snow and sirocco one day, ice and snow 
the other. A sad climate for Italy; but these two winters 
have been extraordinary." 

The next day, he got up " dull and drooping^ The weath- 
er had not changed. Lord Byron absolutely required to 
breathe a little fresh air every day, to take exercise on horse- 
back. His health was excellent, but on these two conditions ; 
otherwise, it failed. His temper clouded over, without air 
and exercise. During the wretched days he was obliged to 
remain at home, he had not even the diversion letters and 
newspapers might have afforded, since no post came in. His 
sole amusement consisted in stirring the fire, and playing with 
Lion, his mastiff, or with his little menagerie. So much did 
he suffer from it all, that his kind heart bestowed pity even 
on his horses : — 

" Horses must have exercise — get a ride as soon 

as weather serves ; deuced muggy still. An Italian winter is 
a sad thing, but all the other seasons are charming." 

On the 7th of January, he adds : — 

" Still rain, mist, snow, drizzle, and all the incalculable com- 
binations of a climate where heat and cold struggle for mas- 
tery." 

If the weather cleared uj) one day, it was only to become 
more inclement the next. 

On the 12th he wrote in his journal : — 

" The weather still so humid and impracticable, that Lon- 
don, in its most oppressive fogs, were a summer bower to 
this mist and sirocco, Avhich has now lasted (but with one day's 



The Melancholy of Loud Byron. 619 

intevval), checkered with snow or heavy rain only, since the 
30th of December, 1820. It is so far hiclcy that I have a 
Uterary turn ; but it is very tiresome not to^be able to stir out, 
in comfort, on any horse but Pegasus, for so many days. The 
roads are even worse than the weather, by the long splashing, 
and the heavy soil, and the inundations." 

And on the 1 9th : — 

"Winter's wind somewhat more unkind than ingratitude 

itself, though Shakspeare says otherwise Rather low in 

spirits — certainly hippish — liver touched — will take a dose of 
salts." 

There was, however, too much elasticity of spirits in him, 
and his melancholy was not sufficiently deep for it to last. His 

evening visit to Countess G at eight o'clock (the day's 

event consoling for all else), a few simple airs played by her 
on the piano, some slight diversion, such as a ray of sunshine 
between two showers, or a star in the heavens raising hopes 
of a brighter morrow, sufficed to clear up his horizon. What 
always raised his spirits was the prospect of some good or 
great and generous action to perform, such, in those days, as 
contributing to the deliverance of a nation. Then, not only 
did the sirocco and falling rain cease to act on his nerves, as he 
himself acknowledged, but his genius would start into fresh 
life, making him snatch a pen, and write off in a few days ad- 
mirable poems,* worthy to be the fruit of long years of medi- 
tation. 

We may, then, believe that if his melancholy had been left 
solely to the physical and moral influences surrounding him 
at this time, it would never have become much developed, bv 
at least would have soon passed away, like morning mists that 
rise in the east to be quickly dissipated by the rays of the 
sun. 

But just as these slight vapors may form into a cloud, if 
winds arise in another part of the sky, bringing fresh moist- 
ure to them, so a slight and fugitive sadness in him might 
be deepened and prolonged through circumstances. And 
this was exactly what happened in the year of which we 
speak, for it was full of disappointments and gi'ief for him. 
To arrive at this persuasion, it is sufficient to remark the co- 
* It was then that " Sardanapalns " came to light. 



(320 The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 

incidence of dates. For example, we find in his memoranda, 
mider tlie date of 18tli of January, 1821 : — 

" At eight proposed to go out. Lega came in with a let- 
ter about a bill unpaid at Venice, which I thought paid 
months ago. I flew into a paroxysm of rage, which almost 
made me faint. I have not been well ever since. I deserve 
it for being such a fool — but it was provoking — a set of 
scoundrels ! It is, however, but five-and-twenty pounds." 

Then, again, on the 1 9th we find : — 

"Rode. Winter's wind somewhat more unkind than in- 
gratitude itself, though Shakspeare says otherwise. At least 
I am so much more accustomed to meet with ingratitude than 
the north wind, that I tliought the latter the sharper of the 
two. I had met with both in the course of twenty-four hours, 
so could judge." 

And on the same day he wrote to Murray a letter, in Avhich, 
after mentioning a host of vexations and worries, he ends by 
saying : — 

" I am in bad humor — some obstructions in business with 
those plaguing trustees, who object to an advantageous loan, 
which I was to furnish to a nobleman (Lord B ) on mort- 
gage, because his property is in Ireland, have shown me how 
a man is treated in his absence." 

Between the 19th and the 22d, his physical and moral in- 
disposition seemed to last ; for he makes reflections in his 
memoranda, upon melancholy bilious peojile, and says that he 
has not even suflicient energy to go on with his tragedy of 
" Sardanapalus," and that he has ceased composing for the 
last few days. Now, it was precisely the 20th that he was 
more than ever annoyed by the obstinacy of the London The- 
atre managers, for, desj)ite his determination and his clear 
right, his protestations and entreaties, they were resolved, 
said the newspaj^ers that came to hand, on having " Marino 
Faliero " acted. He had already written to Murray : — 

" I must really and seriously request that you will beg of 
Messrs. Harris or EUiston to let the Doge alone : it is not an 
acting play ; it will not serve their 25ur2:)ose ; it Avill destroy 
yours (the sale) ; and it will distress me. It is not courteous, 
it is hardly even gentlemanly, to persist in this appropriation 
of a man's writinars to their mountebanks." 



The Melancholy of Lord Eyron. C21 

He wrote thus, on the 19th ; but on tlic 20th his fears liad 
increased to such a pitch that he also addressed the lord- 
clianibcrhiin, requesting him to forbid this representation. 
Indeed, so great was his annoyance, that he wrote to Murray 
twice in the same day': — 

" I wish you woukl speak to Lord Holland, and to all my 
friends and yours, to interest themselves in preventing this 
cursed attempt at representation. 

" God help me ! at this distance, I am treated like a corpse 
or a fool by the few people that I thought I could rely upon ; 
and I loas a fool to think any better of them than of the rest 
of mankind." 

On the 21st his melancholy does not appear to have worn 
off. This is to be attributed to the additions to all the causes 
of the previous day ; and to the news of the illness of Moore, 
Avhom he loved so much, there came, in addition, the follow- 
ing event, which we give in his own words : — 

" To-morrow is my birthday — that is to say, at twelve o' 
the clock, midnight — ^. e., in twelve minutes, I shall have com- 
pleted thirty-three years of age ! ! ! and I go to my bed with 
a heaviness of heart at having lived so long, and to so little 
purpose." 

Let me be allowed here to make some comment on the 
beauty of the sentiment causing this sadness ; for certainly 
he was not actuated by a common sensual, selfish regret at 
youth departing. Beauty, youth, love, fortune, and celebrity, 
all smiled on him then ; he possessed every one of them to a 
degree capable of satisfying any vanity, or any pride, but they 
were inadequate, for a modesty so rare and so admirable as 
his ! His regrets certainly did not apply to youth ; he was 
only thirty-three years of age ! Nor yet to beauty, for he 
possessed it in the highest degree; nor to fame, that had only 
too much been his ; nor to love, for he was the object of real 
idolatry ;* nor to any actions that called for repentance. To 
what, then, did they apply ? To his aspirations after greater 
things, after ideal lyerfections, that neither he nor any one else 
can arrive at here below. It Avas a soaring after the infinite ! 

The cause, noble in itself, of this sadness consisted theii in 
a sort of nostalgia for the great, the beautiful, the good. The 

* See chaptiT on " Life in Kaveiina." 



622 The Melancholy of Lord Byhon. 

simple words in which he expressed it enable us to well un- 
derstand its nature. "I do not regret this year," said he, 
"/or lohat I have done, hut for lohat I have not doneV 

I will not further multiply proofs ; suffice it to say, that 
this year having been one of incessant annoyances to him, not 
only can not we be surprised that he should have experienced 
moments of sadness, but we might rather be astonished at 
their being so few, if we did not know that living above all 
for heart, and his heart being then satisfied, he found therein 
compensation for all the rest. "Thanks for your compli- 
ments of the year. I hope that it will be pleasanter than the 
last. I speak with reference to England only, as far as re- 
gards myself, where I had every kind of disappointment — lost 
an important lawsuit — and the trustees of Lady Byron refus- 
ing to alloAv of an advantageous loan to be made from my 
property to Lord Blessington, etc., by way of closing the four 
seasons. These, and a hundred other such things, made a 
year of bitter business for me in England. Luckily things 
wei-e a little pleasanter for me here, else I should have taken 
the liberty of Hannibal's ring." 

The political and revolutionary events then taking place in 
Romagna and throughout Italy, caused emotions and senti- 
ments of too strong a nature in Lord Byron to be confounded 
with sadness ; but they may well have contributed to develojj 
largely certain melancholy inclinations discoverable toward 
autumn. By degrees, as the first strength of grief passes 
away, it leaves behind a sort of melancholy current in the 
soul, which, without being the sentiment itself, serves as a 
conductor for it, making it gush forth on occurrence of the 
smallest cause. Causes with him were not so slight at this 
period, although he considered them such* out of the super- 
abundance of his philosophical spirit ; and the year that began 
with so many contradictions, ended in the same manner. The 
hope of seeing the Counts Gamba back again at Ravenna was 

daily lessening. All the letters Madame G wrote to him 

from Florence and Pisa, penned as they wei'e amid the anguish 
of fear lest Lord Byron should be assassinated at Ravenna, 
were necessarily pregnant with alarm and affliction. 

* "Man}' small articles make up a sum, 

And hev ho for Caleb Quoteni, oh !" 



The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 623 

JMcauwliile liis interests -were being neglected in London, 
^lurray irritated him by las inexplicable negligence or wor- 
ried him with sending foolish publications and provoking re- 
views. Gifford, a critic he loved and revered, from whom no 
])raise, he said, could compensate for any blame, — Gifford, 
whose ideas on the drama were q\ute opposite to his own, 
had just been censuring his beautiful dramatic compositions.* 
Moreover, Italy having failed in her attemj)ts at independence, 
was insulted in her misfortune by that world which smiles 
only on success, and thus, indirectly, the persons loved and es- 
teemed by Lord Byron came in for their share of outrage. 
And all these contradictions, where and wheti: did he experi- 
ence them? At Ravenna, in a solitude and isolation that 
would have made the bravest stoic shudder, and that was 
prejudicial to him without his being aware of it. For there 
were two distinct temperaments in Lord Byron, that of his 
genius and that of his humanity, and the wants of one were 
not always those of the other. The first, from its nature and 
manifestations, required solitude. The second, eminently so- 
ciable, while yielding to the tyranny of the first, or bearing it 
from force of circumstance, suffered nevertheless when soli- 
tude became too comj^lete. It was not the society of the great 
world, nor what are called its pleasures, that Lord Byron re- 
quired ; but a society of friends and clever persons capable of 
affording a little diversion to his monotonous life. When this 
twofold want did not meet with reasonable satisfaction, a cer- 
tain degree of melancholy necessarily developed itself. " When 
he teas not thrown into some unbearable sort of solitude, like 
that in which he found hitnself at Ravenna^'' says Madame 

G , " his good-humor and gayety only varied xohen letters 

from England came to move and agitate him, or tchen he 
suffered morally. 

" I must, however, add that all sensitive agents, all atmos- 
pherical impressions, acted on hii7i more than on others, and 
it might almost be said that his sky toas mirrored in his soul, 
the latter often taking its color from the former; and if by 
that is understood the hereditary unalady spoken of by others 
and himself, then they are right, for he had tridy inherited a 
most impressionable temperainent.'''' 

* See Lettrr 435. 



624 The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 

Moreover, the absolute, inexorable solitude caused by the 
absence of all his friends from Ravenna, was still further aug- 
mented by the occurrence of intermittent marshy fevers, which 
every body endeavors to avoid by flying from Ravenna at the 
close of summer, and to which he fell a prey. This fever, that 
seized hold of him, and even prevented his departure, might 
alone have sufficed to render him melancholy, for nothing- 
more inclines to sadness. But so intimate was his persuasion 
that when sadness does not proceed from the heart it has no 
caiise for existence, and so little was he occupied with self, 
that he would not allow there could be sufficient cause for 
melancholy in all the sufferings weighing upon him. 

" I ride, I am not intemperate in eating or drinking, and 
my general health is as usual, except a slight ague, which 
rather does good than not. It must be constitutional ; for I 
know nothing more than usual to depress me to that degree."* 

But so little was it the necessary product of his tempera- 
ment alone, so much, on the contrary, did it result from a 
host of causes accidentally united, that he had scarcely arrived 
at Pisa, where most of the causes either ceased or were neu- 
tralized, than his mind recovered its serenity, and he could 
write to Moore : — 

" At present, owing to the climate (I can walk down into 
my garden and pluck my own oranges, indulging in this me- 
ridian luxury of proprietorship), my spirits are much better." 
, Whenever, then, his heart was happy in the happiness of 
those he loved, wherever he found an intellectual society to 
animate the mind, diverting and amusing him without impos- 
ing the chains of etiquette, we vainly seek the faintest trace 
of melancholy. But two great griefs soon befell him at Pisa, 
for sorrow never made long truces with Byron. Truly might 
we say that fate ceased not from making him pay for the 
privilege of his great superiority, by all the sufferings he en- 
dured. Soon after his arrival at Pisa, his little daughter Al- 
legra, whom he was having educated at a convent in Romagna, 
• died of fever, and shortly afterward Shelley was drowned ! 
About the same time the publication of " Cain," then going 
on, raised a perfect storm, furnishing his enemies with pre- 
texts for attacking and slandering him more than ever. They 

* Moore, Letter 471. 



The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 625 

did it in a manner so violent and nnjust, bringing in likewise 
his publisher Murray, that Lord Byron thought it incumbent 
on him to send a challenge to the poet laureate, the most per- 
fidious among them all. At this same period, Hunt, who had 
lost all means of existence by the death of Shelley, forced him- 
self on Lord Byron in such a disagreeable way as to become 
the plague of his life. Lastly, in consequence of a quarrel 
that arose between Sergeant Masi and Lord Byron's riding- 
companions, an arbitrary measure was taken, which again 
compelled his friends — the Counts Gamba — to leave Pisa foi- 
Genoa; and he, though free to remain, resolved on sharing 
their fate and quitting Pisa likewise. For the Government, 
though subservient to Austrian rule, did not dare to apply the 
same unjust decree to an English subject of such high rank. 
Nevertheless, if we except the death of his little girl, which 
caused him profound sorrow — although he bore it with all 
the fortitude belonging to his great soul — and the death of 
Shelley, which also afflicted him greatly, none of the other an- 
noyances had power to grieve him or to create melancholy. 

" It seems to me," he wrote to Murray, " that what with 
my own country and other lands, there has been hot water 
enough for some time." This manner of announcing so many 
disagreeables, shows what self-possession he had arrived at, 
and how he viewed all things calmly and sagely, as Disraeli 
portrays him with truth in " Venetia," when he makes him 
say : — " '■As long as the world leaves us quiet, and does not 
hum us alive, we ought to be pleased. I have grown callous 
to all they say,'' observed Herbert. 'And I also,'' replied Lord 
Cadurcis." Cadurcis and Herbert both represent Lord By- 
ron ; for Disraeli, like Moore, having felt that Lord Byron 
had enough in him to furnish several individualities, all equal- 
ly powerful, thought it necessary to call in the aid of this 
double personification, in order to paint his nature in all its 
richness, with the changes to be wrought by time and events. 

If the war waged against Lord Byi-on by envy, bigotry, 
and wickedness, had had power to create emotion during 
youth, and even later, the gentle, wise philosophy he after- 
ward acquii-ed in the school of adversity, so elevated his 
mind, tliat he could no longer suffer, except from wounds of 
heart, provided his conscience were at rest. When the stupid 

Dd 



626 The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 

persecution raised against him on the appearance of " Cain " 
took place, he wrote to Murray from Pisa, on the 8th of Feb- 
ruary : — 

"All the roio about me has no otherwise affected me than 
by the attack upon yourself, which is ungenerous in Church 

and State I can only say, ' Me, me ; en adeiiim qui feci ;' ^^ 

— that any proceedings directed against you, I beg may be 
transferred to me, who am willing, and ought, to endure them 
aU." 

And then he ends his letter, saying, " I write to you about 
all this row of bad passions and absurdities, with the summer 
moon (for here our winter is clearer than your dog-days), 
lighting the winding Arno, with all her buildings and bridges, 
— so quiet and still ! — What nothings are %ce before the least 
of these stars /" 

Soon after, and while still suffering under the same perse- 
cution from his enemies and weak fools, he wrote to Moore 
from Montenero, recalling in his usual vein of pleasantry, their 
mutual adventures in fashionable London life, and saying, that 
he should have done better while listening to Moore as he 
tuned his harp and sang, to have throxon himself out of the 
window, ere marrying a Hiss Milhank. 

" I speak merely of my marriage, and its consequences, 
distresses, and calumnies ; for I have been much more happy, 
on the whole, since, than I ever could have been with her." 

And some time after, conversing with Madame G , ex- 
amining and analyzing all he might have done as an orator 
and a politician, if he had remained in England, he added : — 

" That then he would not have known her, and that no oth- 
er advantages could have given him the happiness which he 
found in real affection." 

This conversation, interrupted by the unexpected arrival of 
Mr. Hobhouse, and which, but for the inexplicable sadness 
arising from presentiments, would have made earth a para- 
dise for the person to whom it was addressed, took place at 
Pisa, in Lord Byron's garden, a few days before his depart- 
ure for Genoa. At Genoa he continued to lead the same re- 
tired, studious, simple kind of life ; and, although the winter 
was this year again extremely rigorous, and although his 
health had been slightly affected since the day of Shelley's 



The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 627 

funeral, and his stay at Genoa made unpleasant by the ennui 
proceeding from Mr. Hunt's jircsence there,* still he had no fit 
of what can be called melancholy until he decided on leaving 
for Greece. Then the sadness that he would fain have con- 
cealed, but could not, which he betrayed in the parting hour, 
acknowledged Avhile climbing the hill of Albano, and which 
often brought tears to his eyes on board the vessel — this sad- 
ness had its soui'ce in the deepest sentiments of his heart. In 
Gi-eece, Ave know, by the unanimous and constant testimony 
of all who saw him there, that the rare fits of melancholy he 
experienced, all arose from the same cause. During his so- 
journ in the Ionian Islands, as soon as letters from Italy had 
calmed his uneasiness, finding himself surromided by general 
esteem, affection, and admiration, seeing justice dawn for him, 
and confusion for his enemies, being consoled also with the 
prospect of a future, and that, with heart at ease, he might at 
last shed happiness around him ; then he was ever to be found 
full of serenity and even gayety, only "intent on noble virtuous 
actions. One day, however, a great melancholy seized upon 
him, and all the good ai'ound suddenly appeared to vanish. 
Whence did this aris(i ? His letters tell us : — 

" Poor Byron !" wrote Count Gamba, to his sister, on the 
14th of October, "he has been much concerned by the news 
which reached him^some fortnight ago about the headache of 
his dear Ada. You may imagine how trisie were the work- 
ings of his fancy, to which he added the fear of having to 
spend several months without hearing any further tidings of 
her; besides the suspicion that the truth was either kept back 
from him or disguised. Happily, another bulletin has reach- 
ed him, to say that she is all right again, — and one more, to 
announce that the child is in good health, with the exception 
of a slight pain in the eyes. His melancholy is, therefore, a 
little mitigated, though it has not comj^letely disappeared." 

The pre-occupation, disquietude, and anxiety, which he ex- 
perienced more or less continuously in Greece, and above all, 
at Missolonghi, and which I have mentioned elsewhere, cer- 
tainly did agitate,- trouble, and even irritate him sometimes ; 
but then it was in such a passing way, on account of the great 
empire he had acquired over himself, that every one during 

* See his " Life at Genoa." 



628 The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 

his sojourn in the islands, and often even at Missolonghi, 
unanimously pronounced gayety to be his predominant dis- 
position. And, truly, it was only to .griefs proceeding from 
the heart that he granted power to cloud his brow with any 
kind of melancholy. 

After this long analysis, and before summing up, it still re- 
mains for us to examine a species of melancholy that seems 
not to come within our limits, but which occasionally seized 
upon him on his first waking in the morning : — 

" I have been considering what can be the reason why I al- 
ways wake at a certain hour in the morning, and always in 
very bad spirits — ^I may say, in actual despair and despond- 
ency, in all respects — even of that Avhich pleased me over-night. 
In about, an hour or tAvo, this goes off, and I compose myself 

either to sleep again, or a least, to quiet What is it ? 

— liver ?....! suppose that it is all hypochondriasis." 

What name shall Ave give to this physiological jihenome- 
non ? Was it hypochondriasis, as he imagined ? That Lord 
Byron's temjaerament, so sensitive to all moral causes, so vul- 
nerable to all atmospherical influences, should likewise have 
contained a vein of hypochondriasis, is not only possible, but 
likely. And Avere Ave as partial as Ave Avish to be just, there 
Avould certainly be no reason for denying it. Hypochondriasis 
is an infirmity, not a fault. Lord Byron hijnself, when inform- 
ed that such a one complained of being called hypochondri- 
acal, replied somewhat to the f olloAving effect : " I can not con- 
ceive hoAV a man in perfect good health can feel Avounded by 
being told that he is hypochondriacal, since his face and his 
conduct refute the accusation. Were this accusation ever to 
prove con-ect, to what does it amount, except to say that he 
has a liver complaint ? 

" ' I shall publish it before the Avhole world,' said the clev- 
er Smelfungus. 'I should prefer telling my doctor,' said I. 
There is nothing dishonorable in such an illness, which is more 
especially that of people who are studious. It has been the 
illness of those who are good, wise, clever, and even light-heart- 
ed. Regnard, Moliere, Johnson, Gray, Burns, Avere all more or 
less given to it. Mendelssohn and Bayle were often so afilicted 
with it, that they were obliged to have recourse to toys, and to 
count the elates on the roof of the houses opposite, in order to 



The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 629 

distract their attention, Johnson says, that oftentimes he 
would have given a limb to raise his s])irits." 

But, nevertheless, when we seek truth for itself, and not for 
its results, nor to make it help out a system, we must go to the 
\)ottom of things, and reveal all we discover. Thus, after hav- 
ing spoken of this physiological phenomenon, which he suspects 
to be hypochondriasis, Byron adds, that he came u])on him, ac- 
companieil with great thirst, that the London chemist, Mann, 
had cured him of it in three days, that it always yielded to a 
few doses of salts, and that the phenomenon always recurred 
and ended at the same hours. It appears, then, to me, that all 
these symptoms are far from indicating a serious and incurable 
hereditary malady, which would not be likely to have yielded 
to doses of salts, and which his general good health would 
seem to exclude. I consider them rather to point, for their 
cause, to his diet, which was quite insufficient for him, and 
even hurtful, likely to affect the most robust health, and much 
more that of a man xohose organization was so sensitive and 
delicate. And, as this system of denying his body what was 
necessary for it increased the demands of his mind, which in 
its turn revenged itself on the body, the result was that Lord 
Byron voluntarily failed in the duties which every man owes 
to himself. Therefore, I think it more just to rank the melan- 
choly arising from such causes, among his faults, and not 
among the accidents of life, or his natural disposition.* 

Now, having examined his melancholy under all its phases, 
having proved more what it was not than what it was, we shall 
sum up with saying, that Lord Byron really experienced, dur- 
ing his short life, every kind of sadness. First, in early youth, 
he had to encounter disappointments, mortifications, disen- 
chantments, deep moral suffering ; then the constant warfare 
of envy, resulting in cruel, unceasing slanders : then, all the 
philosophical sadness arising in great minds, the best endowed 
and the noblest, from the emptiness of earthly things ; then 
that unslakable thirst for the true, the just, the perfect; that 
sort of nostalgia which the noblest souls experience, because 
their home is not here, because reality disgusts them, from the 
striking contrast it presents with the ideal type, in their mind, 
especially at our epoch, and in our present social condition, 

* See chapter on " Faults." 



630 The Melancholy of Lord Byron. 

when men can with difficulty preserve interior calm by dint 
of compulsory occuijations requiring much energy. And, last- 
ly, there was the sadness inherent to a physical temperament 
of such exquisite sensibility. Yet, notwithstanding aU the 
above, and though Lord Byron was condemned to drain the 
cup of bitterness to its dregs, we think he ought not to be 
classed among geniuses exclusively swayed by the melancholy 
in their nature, since almost all his sadness sprang from acci- 
dent, and from a sort of fictitious temj^erament produced by 
circumstances. Thus his melancholy, being fictitious, remain- 
ed generally subject in real life to his fine natural tempera- 
ment, only gaining the mastery when he was under the influ- 
ence of inspiration, and with pen in hand, 

"All is strange," says La Bruyere, " in the humor, morals, 

and manners of most men The wants of this life, the 

situation in which we are, necessity's law, force nature, and 
cause great changes in it. Thus such menoan not be defined, 
thoroughly and in themselves ; too many external things affect, 
change, and overwhelm them ; they are not precisely what they 
are, or rather, what they appear to be." 

Thus, then, having a natural disposition for gayety received 
from God, and which I shall call interior, which always had the 
upper hand in all important actions of his life, but which was 
only truly known by those who approached him closely, I con- 
clude that gayety often predominated, and ought to have pre- 
dominated much more, in Lord Byron's life. 

But through the fictitious character, which I will call exteri- 
or, derived from education, from circumstances of family, 
country, and association, which (apparently) modified the first, 
and gave the world sometimes a reason, and sometimes a pre- 
text for inventing that dark myth called by his name, and tohich 
really only influenced his writings, melancholy often predom- 
inated in his life. However, its sway was less in reality than 
in the imagination of those who wished to identify the man 
with the poet, and to find the real Lord Byron in the heroes 
of his early poems. 



Lord Byron's Love of Truth. 631 



CHAPTER XXV. 

LOVE OF truth; or, conscience a chief CHARACrrERISTIC 
OP LORD BYRON. 

Some of Lord Byron's biographers, unable to overcome 
the difficulty of defining so complete a character, or of ex- 
plaining, by ordinary niles, certain contradictions apparent 
in his rich nature, think to excuse their own inefficiency and 
elude the difficulty, by saying that he did not possess one of 
those striking points, or decided inclinations, that constitute 
a man's moral physiognomy. They pretend that his. quali- 
ties of heart and mind. Jus passions, inclinations, virtues, 
faults, are so combined in liis ardent, mobile nature, as to 
make him in reality the sport of chance ; and that no inclina- 
tion or passion whatsoever £ould ever become mistress of his 
heart or mind, so as to constitute the basis of a character, 
and render it possible to define it. 

Moore himself, for reasons I have mentioned,* and which 
have been sufficiently spoken of in another chapter, contents 
liimself with saying that Lord Byron's intellectual and moral 
attributes were so dazzling, contradictory, complicated, and 
varied, beyond all example, that it may be truly said there 
was not one man, but several men, in him : — 

" So various, indeed, and contradictory, were his attri- 
butes, both moral and intellectual, that he may be pronounced 
to have been, not one, but many ; nor would it be any great 
exaggeration of the truth to say that, out of the mere parti- 
tion of the properties of his single mind, a plurality of char- 
acters, all different and all vigorous, might have been fur- 
nished. It was this multiform aspect exhibited by him that 
led the world, during his short, wondrous career, to compare 
him Avith that medley host of personages, almost all differing 
from each other, which he playfully enumerates in one of his 
joui'uals." 

* See Introduction. 



632 Lord Byron's Love of Truth. 

These observations of Moore's are only true fi-om a cer- 
tain point of view — the richness of Lord Byron's natui'e. 
But even if this exuberance of faculties, united in one indi- 
vidual, had not been already in itself a character, and had 
not constituted a well-marked distinct personality, almost 
unique in kind, Moore would have been at variance with the 
most profound moralists, who agree that human nature never 
has the simplicity of a geometrical figure, and that, in reality, 
characters always are mixed, complicated, composed of op- 
posite elements of incompatible inclinations and passions. 
For Moore appears to think that men are almost always 
swayed by one chief passion, round which, as round a pivot, 
life unrolls itself, just as we see in theatrical pieces. But 
even if this system were correct, intimate, as he was with 
Lord Byron, and so full of perspicacity, could he not have 
found, towering above the rich iDrofusion of qualities in his 
friend, one dominant passion? Yes, he ought to have dis- 
covered it; but there was a struggle in Moore between the 
love of justice and his friendship for Lord Byron on one side, 
(ind the desire^ alas ! of keeping fair with a host of prejudices 
arrayed against Lord Byron on the other ; and on the favor 
of these j^ersons Moore felt that his own position, or rather his 
pleasure in society, depended. The master-passion that oc- 
cupied so great a place in Lord Byron's mind was his love 
of truth, with all the qualities floxoing from it. 

It may, perhaps, be said that all beautiful souls love truth 
more or less. Yes; but seldom does this quality acquire 
sucli complete development as in Lord Byron. For with 
him it was a real passion, since it gave the law, so to say, to 
liis heart, his mind, and all the actions of his life. This ex- 
traordinary attraction, coming in contact with the lies, hypoc- 
risy, baseness, cowardice, and deceitfulness of others, often 
raised indignation to such a pitch that he could not help 
showing and expressing it. Thus his love of truth aftected 
his social status in England, doing him immense harm ; and, 
if it contributed to his greatness and his heroism, so it like- 
wise added to his sorrows. 

This noble quality showed itself in him, we may say, from 
his birth, under the form of sinceriti/,franhiess, a passion for 
Justice, loyalty, delicacy, honor, and likeicise in the shape of 



Lord Byron's Love of Truth. 633 

special hatred for all hypocHsy^ and for that shade of it pe- 
cxdlar to England, called cant. 

Amid all the passions and events of life, whatsoever the 
consequences, Lord Byron always went straight at truth ; 
as the hero marches up under fire, or the saint to martyrdom. 
A lie was not only a lie to him, it was also an injustice, a 
cowardice, the mark of a corrupt soul, an inconceivable thing, 
and not to be forgiven. A child, at Aberdeen, he was taken 
to the play to see one of Shakspeare's pieces, wherein an act- 
oi", showing the sun, says it is the moon. He was a timid 
child, but (incapable then of understanding Shakspeare's 
meaning) this outrage on truth excited him so far that he 
rose from his seat and exclaimed, "Z tell you, my dear sir, 
that it is the stiny With regard to lying, he remained his 
whole life the child of Aberdeen. 

Neither his nurses nor precej^tors ever surprised him in a 
lie. Education, which in England, more than elsewhere, mod- 
ifies and shapes men according to the requirements of their 
social position, had no power to afiect the fundamental part 
of his nature. While forming his mind, it did not change 
his heart. It destroyed some very dear illusions, and made 
his soul grow sick with disappointment, so that he never 
ceased regretting his happy childhood. Li some respects it 
even had power to superadd a fictitious character to his real 
one, but his qualities of soul and his natural character still 
remained untouched. 

The ardent afiection he entertained for one of the masters 
at Harrow — Dr. Drury — made him feel dislike to this gen- 
tleman's successor. Having been asked to dinner by him, 
Lord Byron declined, because, he said, that by accepting, he 
shoidd belie his heart. At the university, he, like his com- 
panions, ran after the young girls of Cambridge and its en- 
virons, but he never seduced or deceived any. Early in life 
he adopted the good habit of examining himself most rigid- 
ly ; and so strict was his conscience, that, where his com- 
panions saw reason to excuse him, he, on the contrary, found 
cause for self-reproach. 

It was this same imperious, innate want of his nature, 
which, combined with certain circumstances, made him ill 
for a time. The malady was one quite foreign to his tem- 

Dd 2 



634 Lord Byron's Love of Truth. 

perament, springing from self-dejDreciation, and because he 
did not then find sufficient gratification in society. A sort 
of misanthropy stole over his soul, chaining him to the East 
for two years, as a land where both soul and heart were less 
tried. 

On his return home, the impressionability belonging to 
his ardent, enthusiastic nature may have produced undue ex- 
citement, but no bad feeling could ever dim the lustre of the 
nobler passion that held sway over him. 

For him truth was more than a virtue, it was an impera- 
tive duty. Indulgent as he ever showed himself toward all 
weaknesses in general, and especially toward the faults com- 
mitted by his servants, he could not forgive a lie. 

At Ravenna, a young woman attached to the service of 
his little Allegra, being unwilling to avow, for fear of dis- 
missal, that Allegra had had a fall, though the child bore the 
mark of it, told an untruth instead. No intercession could 
prevail on Lord Byron to pardon her, and she was sent 
away.* 

Though eager for glory — especially at an age when not 
having yet arrived at it, he ignored the bite of the serpent 
that often lurks within a garland of roses — he yet repelled 
all undue praise, and was much more indignant at receiving 
it, than when unmerited blame was heaped upon him. Once, 
having been compared to a man of high standing in French 
literature, he, anxious to prove that there could be no resem- 
blance between him and this great man, replied : — " If the 
thing were true, it might flatter me ; but it is impossible to 
accept fictions with pleasure." 

When Dallas — who only knew him then by his family 
name — read his early productions, he was enchanted with 
poetry that often rose to the sublime, and was always chival- 
rous in feeling, " which denoted," he said, " a heart full of 
honorable sentiments, and formed for virtue." This is a pre- 
cious verdict, coming as it does, from a man so bigoted in all 
respects as the elder Dallas. He adds afterward that the 
perusal of these verses, and the sentiments contained in them, 
made him discover great afiinity of mind between the young 
author and another literary man, who was equally remarka- 

* See " Life in Itulv." 



Lord Byron's Love of Truth. 635 

ble as a poet, an orator, and a historian — "?Ae great and good 
Lord Lyttelton of immortal fame.'" " And I doubt not," add- 
ed Dallas, " that one day, like him, he will confer more honor 
on the peerage than it can ever reflect on him." Such a com- 
pliment from a man so rigid and respectable might certainly 
have tempted the most ordinary self-love, but Lord Byron, 
applying his magnifying-glass to his conscience, and compar- 
ing Avhat he saw^ there with his ideal, did not conceive he 
merited such praise. Accordingly he answered with candor 
that enchanted Dallas himself: — 

"Though our periodical censors have been uncommonly 
lenient, I confess a tribute from a man of acknowledged gen- 
ius is still more flattering. But I am afraid I should forfeit 
all claim to candor, if I did not decline such praise as I do not 
deserve, and this is, I am sorry to say, the case in the present 
instance. My pretensions to virtue are, unluckily, so few, that, 
though I should be happy to deserve your praise, I can not 
accept your applause in that respect." 

Thus, from fear of being wanting in truth, he exaggera- 
ted his youthful imperfections, nor could find any excuse for 
them. And in the same way throughout life his dread of 
making himself out better than he was, led him into the op- 
posite defect of representing himself as far inferior to liis real 
woi'th. 

If from considering of the man, we turn to look at the au- 
thor, we shall still always find the same passion for truth. 
By degrees, as he observed society around him, this passion 
increased, for he found the dominant vice was precisely that 
one most repugnant to his nature. If Lord Byron ever ad- 
mitted, with La Rochefoucault, that liypocrisy is a homage 
vice renders to virtue, he did not the less consider this homage 
as degrading to him who ofiered it, insulting to those to whom 
it is addressed, and most corrupting in its eflfect upon the 
soul. 

Thus, then, he from an early period considered hyjiocrisy and 
cant as monsters, in the moral world, to be combated energet- 
ically whenever an opportunity should present itself, and he 
resolved on doing so with all the intrepidity and independ- 
ence of which his nature was capable. His natural gentleness 
disappeared in presence of the whited sepulchres, the Pharisees 



636 Lord Byron's Love of Truth. 

ot our day. His whole literary life was one struggle against 
this vice, " the crying sin of the times,"* as he called it. 

His conscience was quite as strict with regard to intellect- 
ual things as it was in the domain of morals. We might even 
call it marvellously strict for our epoch, for the decay of truth 
forms a sadly striking characteristic of the present time. I 
know not what modern critic it is who says that a general 
enervation of intelligence and languor of soul now prevail in 
this respect ; that the majesty of truth has "been profaned, 
and the ancient regard in which she was held has been de- 
stroyed by religious sects, philosophical systems, the insolent 
attacks of the press, and by the revolution that has taken 
place in ideas as well as in deeds. Thence the general tend- 
ency to place truth and error on the same footing, in theoi'v 
and in practice. Thence the equality of rights established 
between both, and which has become like the normal state of 
mind general in society. 

Certainly, in our day, the love and practice of truth have 
grown obsolete ; dramatic pieces and works of fiction, indeed 
all kinds of literature, especially biography, and even history, 
combine to outrage truth with impunity ; no compunction is 
felt in transforming great characters into monsters, and mon- 
sters into heroes. People are no longer astonished that trav- 
ellers' narratives should be like poems, good or bad, works of 
imagination full of anachronisms, exaggerations, impossibili- 
ties, making the sea take the place of mountains, and putting 
mountains where the sea should be. Truth is hidden as dan- 
gerous, not always to humanity, but to private interests to 
which it might bring smaller gains. Now if, at an epoch like 
this, we meet with geniuses, or even conscientious talents, sac- 
rificing, both in their works and their actions, every interest 
or consideration to truth, ought we not to look upon them as 
real marvels ? Undoubtedly we ought, and there can be no 
question that Lord Byron belonged to the small number of 
such marvels. Friends and enemies are agreed thereupon. 

Gait, who was . brought into contact with the poet by 

chance, at the time of his first journey into Greece, and who 

travelled with him for several days, when remarking the 

beauty of Lord Byron's poems on Greece, says, "they possess 

* Preface to canto xi. of " Don Juan." 



Lord Byron's Love of Truth. 637 

the great and rare quality of being as true with regard to na- 
ture and facts as theij are suhlhne for poetic expressio?i.^'' 

He quotes those beautiful lines with which the tliird canto 
of the "Corsair" opens, wherein Lord Byron describes the 
lovely scenery that met his eye on ascending the Pirseus ;* 
and to the Cape Colonna, and to the so-called Tomb of Thftaiis- 
tocles in the " Giaour ;" and Gait fancies he can remember by 
what circumstance and aspect of nature they were inspired. 

Lord Byron did not admit the possibility of describing a 
site that had not been seen, a sentiment that had not been ex- 
perienced, or at least well known on certain and direct testi- 
mony. Never could people say of him, what M. Sainte-Beuve 
asserted of Chateaubriand, namely, that he had not visited the 
places he described, that he lent to some what of right belonged 
only to others, and that he had not even seen Niagara. 

On the contrary, when Lord Byron was writing, the ob- 
jects described were really present, so to say, as facts rather 
than in imagination. 

Mr. Gait was so persuaded of this that he almost denied 
him the possession of imagination, and he says that the stamp 
of pei'sonal experience is so strongly marked in many of Lord 
Byron's productions, usually considered fancies or inventions, 
that he deems it impossible not to assign for their basis real 
facts or events wlierein he had been either actor or spectator. 

To refuse Lord Byron imagination would be absurd ; but 
it is true that his imagination could only have discovered the 
elements and materials so wonderfully put together, through 
a scrupulous and profound observation of reality. And it 
was only afterward, that superadding sentiment and thought, 
he wrought out such splendid truths, which, if not precisely 
combined in the living reality, were so far superior that any 
absence in the original model appeared like a forgetfulness 
of nature. 

Without, then, admitting Mr. Gait's ideas, in their ex- 
treme consequences, it is at least certain that Lord Byron's 
genius required so much to lean on truth in all things, that 
it may be said he owed far more to facts than to the power 
of imagination. 

* " Slow sinks, more lovely ere his rac? ho run, 

***** 

Not as in northern climes." " Corsair, " canto iii. 



638 Lord Byron's Love of Truth. 

Apart from the faculty of combining, which he possessed 
in a sj^lendid manner, if any one should take the trouble to 
observe, one by one, the characters he has painted, we should 
be still more confirmed in the above opinion. For instance, 
Conrad, that magnificent type of the corsair, that energetic 
compound of an Albanese warrior and a naval ofiicer, far 
from being an imaginary character, was. entirely drawn from 
nature and real history. All who have travelled in the Le- 
vant, and especially at that period, must have met with per- 
sonages whose appearance distinctly recalled Conrad. 

That peaceful men, leading a regular monotonous life in 
the midst of civilized Europe, or persons who have only trav- 
elled over their maps or their books, quietly seated in their 
library — that they should find characters like Conrad's ec- 
centric, and the incidents of such a career improbable, may 
easily be conceived ; but it is not the less true that both are 
in perfect keeping with each other and with truth. 

I might say the same thing of " Childe Harold." But 
having spoken of this character sufficiently elsewhere, in or- 
der to repel the unjust identification of the Pilgrim with the 
author, — for " Childe Harold " appears to me the personifi- 
cation of a moral idea, of the accidental transitory state of a 
soul placed under certain circumstances, rather than type, — 
1 will only add here, that this unjust identification was also 
caused by that craving which Lord Byron experienced of 
leaning, in all things, on reality, on facts acquired through 
his own experience. For although it is incorrect to imagine 
that he made use of his looking-glass for drawing the por- 
traits of his heroes, since the glass could not even for a pass- 
ing moment — such as sufiices only for a daguerreotype — have 
converted his gentle, beautiful expression of face into the 
dark countenance of a Harold, a Giaour, a Conrad, or a Lara ; 
still it is true that he lent them some of his own noble, 
fine lineaments, some faint shadow of his beauty, and that 
more than once he committed the fault of jDlacing them in 
situations exactly similar to his own, even going so far as to 
install his heroes within the ancient abbey of Newstead, — a 
hospitality that cost him dear. 

Characters that had produced a strong impression on him 
easily became models for the personages portrayed in his 



Lord Byron's Love of Truth. 639 

poems. It was the terrible Ali Pasha of Yanina who furnish- 
ed the most striking features depicted in tlie heroes of his 
Eastern poems. The reports current about Ali Pasha's uncle 
served to lend their share of truth ; and we may say, in gen- 
eral, that those acquainted with Lord Byron and his history 
possessed the clew to his imaginary personages ; they could 
even recognize his Adelinas, Dudus, Gulbeyazs, Angelinas, 
Myrrhas, Adahs ; and having first taken his stand on earth, 
it cost his fancy very little to soar and idealize what might 
else have been too commonplace. 

As to the historical characters, we are certain of finding 
them in the most authentic histories ; for it would be impos- 
sible to carry scrupulous research further than he did. Some 
observations on "Marino Faliero," his first historical drama, 
Avill suflice for an example. 

The impression made on Lord Byron, when he arrived in 
Venice, by the character of this old man, and the terrible 
catastrophe that overtook him, first gave rise to his idea of 
the tragedy. But four years intervened between the project 
and its execution. During this time he consulted all the his- 
tories of Venice, every document and chronicle he could lay 
his hands on. He passed long hours in the hall of the great 
council, opposite the gloomy black veil surmounted by that 
terrible inscription — '■''Jilc est locus Marino Faliero decapitati 
pro criminibus suis /" on the Giants' staircase, where the 
Doge had been crowned ere he was degraded and beheaded ; 
he had interrogated the stones forming the monuments raised 
to the Doges ; often was he seen in the church of St. John 
and St. Paul, seeking out the tomb of Faliero and his fami- 
ly : and still he was not satisfied, for the motives of the con- 
spiracy did not yet present themselves so clearly to his mind 
as the fact of the conspiracy itself Then he wrote to Mur- 
ray, to search him out in England other more authentic docu- 
ments concerning this tragical end. 

"I want it," he said to him in February, 1817, "and can 
not find so good an account of that business here. ... I have 
searched all their histories ; but the policy of the old aristoc- 
racy made their writers silent on his motives, which were a 
private grievance against one of the patricians." 

And not only did he seek for truth in books and monu- 



040 Lord Byron's Love of Truth. 

ments, but he likewise sought it in the character and man- 
ners of all classes inhabiting the lagoons. It was only to- 
ward the close of 1820, at Ravenna, that he felt ready to 
write his magnificent drama. 

All the characters in this tragedy, except that admirable 
one of Angiolina, which he drew from imagination and traced 
with his heart, were supplied by history. In it Lord Byron 
has sci'upulously respected places, epoch, and the time of 
duration for the action ; points which he considered as ele- 
ments of truth in art ; in short, all essential circumstances 
were faithfully reproduced in his drama. 

Even the faults which critics little versed in psycholog- 
ical science, and obstinately forgetful that this work was not 
intended for acting^ pretend to find in it, were but the nec- 
essary results of historical accuracy. These critics wished 
to meet with the love, jealousy, and other passions common 
to their age and country ; but Lord Byron would only give 
them what he found in history. Thence, no love and no jeal- 
ousy ; but a proud, violent character, coming in collision with 
a government proud and violent as itself; one of those men 
that are exceptional but real, in whom extremes of good and 
evil meet ; one of those dramatic natures that fastened strong- 
ly on his imagination, producing a shock which kindled the 
flame of genius : — 

" It is now four years that I have meditated this work, and 
before I had sufficiently examined the records, I Avas rather 
disposed to have made it turn on a jealousy in Faliero. But 
perceiving no foundation for this in historical truth, and 
aware that jealousy is an exhausted passion in the drama, I 
have given it a more historical form."* 

As to the motives for the conspiracy, the clearness of cer- 
tainty only came to him a year after his drama had been pub- 
lished. But there was such an attraction between his mind 
and truth that his intuition had supplied the want of mate- 
rial certainty. And when a year afterward, at Ravenna, he 
received the document so long desired, he was happy in send- 
ing Murray a copy of this document translated from an an- 
cient chronicle by Sir Francis Palgrave, the learned author 
of the " History of the Anglo-Saxons," to be able to write : — 

* See Preface to Marino Faliero. 



Lord Byron's Love of Truth. 641 

" Inclosed is the best account of the ' Doge Faliero,' which 
was only sent to me from an old MS. the other day. Get it 
translated, and append it as a note to the next edition. You 
will perhaps be pleased to see that my conceptions of his 
character were correct, though I regi'et not having met with 
this extract before. You will perceive that he himself said 
exactly what he is made to say about the Bishop of Tre- 
viso. You will also see that ' he spoke very little,' and these 
only words of rage and disdain, after his arrest, which is the 
case in the play, except when he breaks out at the close 
of Act V. But his speech to the conspirators is better in 
the MS. than in the play. I wish tliat I had met with it in 
time." 

The historical inaccuracies of authors, their carelessness 
about truth, whether the result of malice or inattention, re- 
volted Lord Byron, and especially if such untruths tended 
to asperse a great character. The lies of Dr. Moore about 
the " Doge Faliero " almost made him angry : — 

" Where did Dr. Moore find that Marino Faliero begged 
his life ? I have searched the chroniclers, and find nothing 
of the kind." 

Lord Byron observes at this is not only historically, 
but also logically false : — 

" His having shown a want of firmness," said Byron, " in- 
deed, wovild be as contrary to his character as a soldier, to 
the age in which he lived, and at which he died, as it is to 
the truth of history. I know no justification, at any distance 
of time, for calumniating a historical character: surely truth 
belongs to the dead, and to the unfortunate ; and they who 
have died upon a scaflfold have generally had faults enough 
of their own, without attributing to them those which the 
very incurring of the perils which conducted them to their 
violent death render, of all others, the most improbable." 

We know his consideration and sympathy for Campbell, 
though Campbell had not always behaved well toward him. 
lie forgave him many things, but he could not pardon the in- 
difference this author often showed for historical tnith ! 

At Ravenna he wrote in his journal, on the 10th of Jan- 
uary, 1821 : — 

" Read Campbell's ' Poets.' Marked errors of Tom (the 



642 Lord Byron's Love of Truth. 

author) for correction Corrected Tom Campbell's 

' slips of the pen ;' a good work, though," 

In his appendix to the first canto of" Don Juan," he says, 
" Being in the humor of criticism, I shall proceed, after having 
ventured upon the slips of Bacon, to wind up on one or two 
as trifling in the edition of the ' British Poets,' by the justly 
celebrated Campbell. But I do this in good-will, and trust 
it will be so taken. If any thing could add to my opinion 
of the talents and true feeling of that gentleman it would be 
his classical, honest, and triumphant defense of Pope against 
the vulgar cant of the day, as it exists in Grub Street. 
" The inadvertencies to which I allude are . . . ." 
And after mentioning a few inadvertencies which are 
faults against justice and truth, he says : — 

" A great poet quoting another should be correct : he 
should also be accurate when he accuses a Parnassian brother 
of that dangerous charge, ' borrowing :' a poet had better 
borrow any thing (excepting money) than the thoughts of 
another — they are always sure to be reclaimed ; but it is 
very hard, having been the lender, to be denounced as the 
debtor, as is the case of Anstey versus Smollett. As ' there 
is honor among thieves,' let there be some among poets, and 
give each his due — none can aflbrd to give it more than Mr. 
Campbell himself, who, with a high reputation for originality, 
and a fame which can not be shaken, is the only poet of 
the times (except Rogers) who can be reproached (and in 
him it is indeed a reproach) wdth having written too little." 
Hereupon he writes to Murray, half joking, half serious : — 
" Murray, my dear, make my respects to Thomas Camp- 
bell, and tell him from me, with faith and friendship, three 
things that he must right in his 'Poets.' First, he says An- 
stey's ' Bath Guide ' characters are taken from Smollett. 
'Tis impossible: the 'Guide' was published in 1766, and 
' Humphry Clinker ' in IVVI — dunque, 'tis Smollett who has 
taken from Anstey. Secondly, he does not know to whom 
Cowper alludes when he says there was one ' who built a 
church to God, and then blasphemed His name :' it was ' Deo 
erexit Voltaire ' to whom that mad Calvinist and coddled 
poet alludes. Thirdly, he misquotes and spoils a passage 
from Shakspeare, — ' To gild refined gold, to paint the lily,' 



Lord Byron's Love of Truth. 643 

etc. ; for lily he puts rose, and bedevils in more words than 
one the whole quotation. 

" Now, Tom is a fine fellow ; but he should be correct : 
for the first is an injustice (to Anstcy), the second an igno- 
rance^ and the third a blunder. Tell him all this, and let 
liira take it in good part : for I might liave chastised him in 
a review and punished him ; instead of Avhich, I act like a 
Christian. Bybon." 

With regard to a quotation, or any circumstance intended 
to prove a truth, his love of exactness amounted to a scruple. 
He would have thought himself wanting in honor if he had 
made a false or an incomplete quotation. Li one of the notes 
to " Don Juan," speaking of Voltaire, he had quoted those 
famous words : — " Zaire, vous pleurez f but being accustomed 
at that time to make great use of the familiar pronoun thou, 
as in the case in Italy, his quotation ran: '"'' Zaire, tu pleures.'''' 
But he hastened to write to Murray, " Voltaire wrote : Zaire, 
voiis pleurez ; don't forget." 

In his tragedy of " Faliero," Lord Byron had said that the 
Doges, Faliero's predecessors, were buried in the church of 
St. John and St. Paul ; but he afterward ascertained that it 
was only on the death of Andrea Dandolo, Faliero's prede- 
cessor, that the Council of Ten, by a sort of jDresentiment 
perhaps, decreed that the Doges should in future be buried 
with their families in their own chui'ch ; previously they had 
all been interred in the church of St. Mark : — 

"... All that I said of his ancestral Doges, as buried at 
St. John's and Paul's, is a mistake, they being interred in St. 
Mark's. Make a note of this, by the Editor, to rectify the 
fact. 

" In the notes to ' Marino Faliero,' it may be as well to say 
that ''Benintende ' was not really of the Ten, but merely Grand 
Chancellor, a separate office (although important) ; it was an 
arbitrary alteration of mine. 

" As I make such pretentions to accuracy, I should not like 
to be twitted even Avith such trifles on that score. Of the 
l)lay they may say what they please, but not so of my cos- 
tume and dram, pers., — they having been real existences."* 

* Moore, Letter 391. 



644 Lord Byron's Love of Truth. 

" As to Sardanapalus," he writes to Murray, " I thought of 
nothing but Asiatic history. The Venetian play, too, is 
rigidly historical. My object has been to dramatize, like the 
Greeks (a modest phrase), striking passages of history. 

" All I ask is a preference for accuracy as relating to Italy 
and other places." 

In books, monuments, and the fine arts, it was always truth 
that interested him. Except Sir Walter Scott's productions, 
he gave no place in his library to novels ; other works of 
imagination, especially poetry, were excluded ; two-thirds of 
his books were French works. His reading lay chiefly in 
history, biography, and politics. 

Among the books Murray sent him were some travels: 
" Send me no more of them," he wrote, " I have travelled 
enough already ; and, besides, they lie.''''* 

Books with effected sentiment of any kind, imaginary 
itineraries, made him very impatient. High-sounding phrases 
jarred on his ears ; and I thoroughly believe that the forty 
centuries' lookirig down from the Pyramids upon the grand 
French army somewhat spoilt his hero for him. 

What he especially sought for in monuments and among 
ruins was their authenticity. It was on this sole condition 
that he took interest in them. 

Campbell, in his " Lives of English Poets," had averred 
that readers cared no more for the truth of the manners por- 
trayed in CoUins's " Eclogues " than for the authenticity of 
the history of Troy : — 

" 'Tis false," says Lord Byron in his memoranda, after hav- 
ing read Campbell ; " we do care about ' the authenticity of 
the tale of Troy.' I have stood upon that plain daily, for 
more than a month, in 1810 ; and if any thing diminished my 
pleasure, it was that the blackguard Bryant had impugned 
its veracity. It is true that I read ' Homer Travestied ' (the 
first twelve books), because Hobhouse and others bored me 
with their leai-ned localities, and I love quizzing. But I still 
venerated the grand original as the truth of history (in the 
material facts) and of place : otherwise, it would have given 
me no delight. Who will persuade me, when I reclined upon 
a mighty tomb, that it did not contain a hero ? Its very 

* Letter 391. 



Lord Byron's Love of Truth. 645 

magnitude proved this. Men do not labor over the ignoble 
and petty dead — and why should not the dead be Homer's 
dead ? The secret of Tom Campbell's defense of inaccuracy 
in costume and description is, that his ' Gertrude,' etc., has 
no more locality in common with Pennsylvania than with 
Penmanmawr. It is notoriously full of grossly false scenery, 
as all Americans declare, though they praise parts of the 
poem. It is thus that self-love forever creeps out, like a 
snake, to sting any thing which happens, even accidentally, 
to stumble upon it." 

In order then, that Lord Byron might take an interest in 
either a place, a monument, or a work of art, he must associ- 
ate them in his mind with some fact which had really taken 
place. By what was he most impressed on reaching Venice ? 

" There is still in the Doge's Palace the black veil painted 
over Faliero's picture, and the staircase whereon he was first 
crowned Doge and subsequently decapitated. This was the 
thing that most struck my imagination in Venice — more than 
the llialto, which I visited for the sake of Shylock : and more, 
too, than Schiller's 'Armenian,' a novel which took a great 
hold of me when a boy. It is also called the ' Ghost Seer,' 
and I never walked down St. Mark's by moonlight without 
thinking of it. And 'at nine o'clock he died.' But I hate 
things all fiction, and therefore the 3Ierchant and Othello have 
no great attractions for me, but Pierre has. There should 
always be some foundation of fact for the most airy fabric, 
and pure invention is but the talent of a liar." 

The little taste which he entertained for painting came 
from the impression that, of all the arts, it was the most arti- 
ficial, and the least truthful. In April, 1817, he wrote to 
Murray as follows, on the subject : — 

" Depend upon it, of all the arts it is the most artificial 
and unnatural, and that by which the folly of mankind is 
most imposed upon. I never yet saw the picture or the 
statue which came a league within my conception or expect- 
ation : but I have seen many mountains, and seas, and rivers, 
and views, and two or three women, who went as far beyond 
It." 

But, then, what enthusiasm, whenever he did meet with 
truth in art ! When visiting the Manfrini Gallery at Venice, 



64:6 Lord Byron's Love of Truth, 

which is so rich in chefs-cVwuvre^ he admits the charm of 
painting, and exclaims : — 

" Among them there is a portrait of Ariosto by Titian, sur- 
passing all my anticipation of the power of j^ainting or hu- 
man exjDression ; it is the poetry of portrait and the portrait 
of poetry. Here was also a portrait of a lady of the olden 
times, celebrated for her talents, whose name I forget, but 
whose features must always be remembered. I never saw 
greater beauty or sweetness, or wisdom : it is the kind of 
face to go mad about, because it can not detach itself from 
its frame." 

Our readers are aware with what obstinate determination 
the public voice pi-oclaimed Lord Byron a skeptic, and still 
does. Nor Avill we here examine whether that ejiithet is 
merited, because a soul has been sometimes visited by the 
malady always more or less afflicting great minds ; we will 
not ask if disquietude — which constitutes the dignity of our 
nature ; if the torture caused by doubts and uniA^ersal uncer- 
tainty, by the impossibility of explaining what is, or of com- 
prehending what will be, if all this deserve to be called skep- 
ticism. It is not necessary to enter into the subject here, be- 
cause we have already examined in another chapter* with 
what foundation such a name was applied to Lord Byron. 

Now, we will content ourselves Avith adding that it was 
his love of truth and his delicacy of conscience which caused, 
in a great measure, Avhat has been called his skepticism. For 
these sentiments would not allow him to affirm things that 
many others perhaps affirm, Avithout believing more in them. 
Moreover, he appears sometimes to haA- e been persuaded that 
doubt was the feeling least removed from truth. 

THIS QUALITY RISES TO A A^RTUE. 

If Lord Byron's passion for truth had simply remained 
within the limits already described, it Avould have giA^en earn- 
est of a noble soul, more gifted than others, Avith instincts of 
a higher order ; it Avould have lighted up his social character, 
given the charm of that frankness so delightful in his man- 
ners, conversation, style ; so attractive in the expression of 
his fine countenance ; but still it would only have been a 

* See chapter on " Religion." 



Lord Byron's Love of Truth. 647 

natural quality, without any more right to the name of virtue 
than all the other beautiful instincts he had received from 
Pleaven ; but, when ceasing to be purely natural, it became a " 
distinguishing characteristic of the author, then it went far 
beyond these limits. In his writings it raised him above all 
calculations of interest," made him despise all considerations 
of ambition or of ease, exjjosed him to terrible party warfare 
to slander, and revenge ; spurred him on to attack the great 
and powerful Avhenever they turned aside from the path of 
virtue, justice, or simplicity, and made him forget his nation- 
ality, that he might better remember his humanity. 

Meanwhile he never once yielded to any interest ; and thus 
this innate faculty, which might have been a virtue easily 
practiced, became one of heroic merit. 

We may safely assert that all his griefs through life owed 
their origin to this rare quality ; for perhaps he did not know 
sufficiently how to reconcile it with a certain amount of that 
social virtue called prudence ; whose office it is to keej) silence 
when advisable, and not to utter dangerous truths. 

Certainly Lord Byron never showed that wisdom for him- 
self which he knew well how to practice for others ; witness 
his conduct in Greece, Avhere, accoi'ding to the account given 
by all Avho lived with him there at that time, he displayed 
the utmost prudence, moderation, and abilitj".* 

* M. Trieoupi, in his interesting " History of the Greek Eevokition," ends 
his fine article upon Lord Byron, and upon his death, in the following words : — 

"This man's great name, his noble struggle in the midst of misfortunes, the 
troubles which he had l)orne for the sake of Greece, the bright hopes which he 
was on the point of seeing realized, proved sufficiently what the Greeks lost in 
losing him, and the misfortune which his death was to tliem. Each one con- 
sidered and mourned his loss as a private and as a public calamity. In order- 
ing the funeral, the governor of the (own exclaimed, ' Tiiis time the beautiful 
Easter rejoicings have turned for us into hours of bitterness,' and he was right. 
All forgot Easter in presence of the blow which was dealt them by the loss of 
such a man. 

"Byron, as a poet, was enthusiastic, but his enthusiasm, like his poetr}-, was 
deep ; his policy in Greece was likewise intelligent and profound. No dreams 
like those formed by most of the lovers of the Greeks. No Utopian plans, dem- 
ocratic or anti-democratic. Ev'en the press appeared to him as yet uncalled-for. 
The independence of Greece, that was the essential point at issue, and to obtain 
this end he counselled the Greeks to be united among themselves, and to respect 
foreign courts. His principal care was the organization of the army, and the 
procuring of tlie funds necessary to maintain it. He loved glory, but onlv that 
which is solid. He refused to take the title of Commander-general of Conti- 
nental Greece, which the Government and the nation offered him in common ac- 



648 Lord Byron's Love of Truth. 

That social virtue of prudence, which, to our mind, is 
somewhat akin to a defect, was wholly wanting in him in 
private life;, yet it is a necessary virtue in his country, and 
especially was so in his day. England then was, in many 
respects, far from resembling the England of our time. Lib- 
erty of opinion was certainly guaranteed by law ; but then 
there were the drawing-room tribunals ; very unforgiving 
with regard to certain truths, and little disposed to admire 
that inclination which prompts superior minds not to con- 
ceal their real thoughts. The earth or the universe might 
have been conceded as a field open to criticism, he might ex- 
press his true opinions on all points, provided only some few 
books, and one island, called England, were excepted. Under 
show of respect, absolute silence was required on these heads. 
They constituted the ark of alliance; to speak ill of them was 
not permissible, and even to praise was almost dangerous. 

In the enchanted palace of " Blue beard " one single 
chamber was reserved ; and woe to him who penetrated 
therein. 

Since then, a period of peace and prosperity, together with 
the effects of time and travel, have greatly improved the 
noble character of the English nation. In our day, pens, 
tongues, and consciences are less strictly bound, and many 
truths may now be avowed without fear of bringing the flush 
of anger or of indignant modesty to the cheek. 

The present, and, still less, the past, are no more considered 
as sacred ground. Even the Norman conquest is no longer 
a seditious subject. The dictionary of society has gained 
many words ; and Englishmen no longer fear to see their 
children lose that patriotism which for them is almost a relig- 
ion, because they read books not deifying their own country 
and full of libels on the rest of the globe. 

Historians, novel-writers, poets — even theologians — have 
vied with each other in tearing away the bandages conceal- 
ing many old wounds, in order to cure them by contact with 
the vivifying breezes of heaven ; and twenty years after Lord 
Byron, Macaulay has been able, without losing his popularity, 
to show less filial piety than he, and to blame the past in 

cord. He hated politics as a rule, and avoided parliamentary discussions even 
in his own country. . . ."| 



Lord Byron's Love of Truth. 649 

language so beautiful as to obtain forgiveness for the sacri- 
fice even of truth. 

But, in Lord Byron's time, England was carrying on her 
great struggle against the lion of the age. Separated from 
the Continent by war still more than by the sea, the cannon's 
roar booming across the waters added venom to lier Avounds, 
and pride made her prefer to conceal rather than to heal 
them. 

The echo of this detested cannon was still sounding when 
Lord Byron returned to England, from his travels in the 
East, with the same thirst for truth as heretofore, but having 
gained much from observation, comparison, and reflection. 
lie believed he had the right to make use of faculties with 
equal independence, whether as regarded his own nation or 
the rest of humanity. England then seemed to wish to ar- 
rogate to herself the monojjoly, of morality, wisdom, and 
greatness, together with the right of despising the rest of the 
world. Lord Byron considered this pretension as excessive, 
and he expressed his generous incredulity in lines proudly 
independent. He refused to see heroism where he did not 
believe it to exist, and would not accord glory to victories 
that seemed to him the result of chance. He refused to see 
virtue and religion in what he considered calculation or hy- 
pocrisy. He demanded justice for Catholic Ireland, and im- 
partiality for enemies ; he even went so far as to show sym- 
pathy for Napoleon and deplore his fall. He could not allow 
party spirit to depreciate the genius of Napoleon. Madame 
de Stael, who had made Lord Byron's acquaintance in Lon- 
don when he was very young, and had conceived a great lik- 
ing for him, often wrote to him, and always ti'ied to prove 
that he was wrong in thinking so highly of Napoleon. But 
on account of this Lord Byron broke off the correspondence 
suddenly, which vexed Madame de Stael not a little. The 
invasion of France, the humiliation of a great nation, was 
painful to him; and this generous sentiment even caused him 
to commit a tq^X fault, tohich he expressed regret for more than 

once, says Madame , when conversing with her at Pisa 

and Genoa. The fault was a certain feeling of hostility in- 
dulged toward the illustrious Duke of Wellington, whom he 
yet confessed to be the glory of his country. 

Ee 



650 Lord Byron's Love of Truth. 

" P.S. — If you hear any news of battle or retreat on the 
part of the Allies (as they call them), pray send it. He has 
my best wishes to manure the fields of France with an invad- 
ing army. I hate invaders of all countries, and have no 
patience with the cowardly cry of exultation over him at 
whose name you all turned whiter than the snow to which 
you are indebted for your triumph." 

He was too generous an enemy to echo the Archbishop 
of Canterbury's prayer.* 

As a Whig, he was indignant at the Prince of Wales's 
conduct in deserting his political banner and passing over to 
the Tories when he became regent ; so he wrote some hard 
verses against him, — " Lines to a Lady weeping," addressed 
to the Princess Charlotte. 

This poem was the olive-branch that Robert was about to 
snatch from the tomb. All evil passions were now let loose 
against Lord Byron. 

The Tory party — so influential then, and which saw with 
displeasure the future promise of a great orator held out in 
the person of a young Whig peer — gladly seized a pretext 
for displaying its hostility. The higher clergy naturally 
clung to the interests of the aristocracy, as identical with 
their own : moreover, they were vexed with the young lord 
for attacking intolerancy, hypocrisy, and similar anti-Chris- 
tian qualities, and consequently espoused with ardor Tory 
grievances. Pretending even to discover danger to religion 
in some philosophical verses,f they denounced the young 
poet as an atheist and a rebel At the same time his admira- 
tion for foreign beauties wounded feminine self-love at home. 
Li thus placing the interests of truth above every other 
consideration, not only from the necessity he experienced of 
expressing it, but also with the design of serving justice, 
Lord Byron by no means ignored the formidable amount of 
burning coals he was piling upon his head. He knew well 
that the secret war going on against him delighted all his 
rivals, who, not having dared to show their spite at the time 
of his triumphs, had bided patiently the day of vengeance. 

* This strange prayer ran tbus:— "0 Lord Almighty, give us strength to 
destroy the last man of that perfidious nation (the French), which has sworn to 
devour alive thy faithful servants (the English")." 

f Stanzas of second canto of " Childe Harold." 



Lord Byron's Love of Truth, 651 

He was aware of it all, Lut did not therefore draw back ; 
and looking fearlessly at the pile heaped with all these com- 
bustible materials intended for his martyrdom, he did not 
any the more cease from his work. He resisted, and accept- 
ed martyrdom like a hero. 

" You can have no conception of the uproar the eight lines 
on the little Royalty's weeping in 1812 (now republished) 

have occasioned The ' Morning Post," Sun' ' Herald,' 

' Courier,' have all been in hysterics. ... I am an atheist, 
a rebel, and at last the devil (boiteux^ I presume). My de- 
monism seems to be a female's conjecture The abuse 

against me in all directions is vehement, unceasing, loud."* 

The editor, alarmed, proposed to have them disavowed. 

" Take any course you please to vindicate yourself," Lord 
Byron answered him ; " but leave me to fight my own way, 
and, as I before said, do not compromise, me by any thing 
which may look like shrinMng on my part ; as for your own, 

make the best of it I have already done all in my 

power by the suppression " (of the satire). " If that is not 
enough, they must act as they please ; but I will not ' teach 

my tongue a most inherent baseness,' come what may 

I shall bear Avhat I can, and what I can not I shall resist. 
The worst they could do would be to exclude me from soci- 
ety. I have never coui-ted it, nor, I may add, in the general 
sense of the word, enjoyed it ; and there is a world else- 
where \ 

"Any thing remarkably injurious I have the same means 
of repaying as other men, with such interest as circumstances 
may annex to it." 

After this first great explosion, of which the verses ad- 
dressed to the Princess Charlotte had formed the occasion 
and the pretext, the commotion appeared to subside. But 
the fire in the mine had not gone out. It still circulated ob- 
scurely, gathering strength in the quiet darkness. Another 
occasion was alone wanting for a second explosion, and a 
hand to strike the spark. The circumstance of his unhappy 
marriage, which had taken place in the interval, presented 
this occasion ; and the hand to strike the spark was the one 
which had received the nuptial ring a year before. The ex- 

* Moore, Letter 162. 



652 Lord Byron's Love of Truth. 

plosion was brutal, abominable, insensate — unworthy of the 
society that tolerated it. 

Then came another interval ; the good who had been 
drawn into this stormy current were seized wit»h regret and 
reniorse. " TFAy did toe thus rise against our spoilt and fa- 
vorite child T'' The wicked knew well wherefore they had 
done it, but the good did not. Macaulay told it them one 
day, twenty years afterward, better than any one else has, 
in one of those passages where the beauty of his style, far 
from injuring truth, lends it a double charm, enhancing it 
just as nature's beauty is set off by a profusion of light. 

This good feeling stealing over the public conscience 
alarmed Lord Byron's deadly enemies. They feared lest 
sentimental remorse should compromise their victory ; and 
they manoeuvred so well, that from that hour persecution 
took up permanent abode in England, under pretext of of- 
fense to religion or morals. It followed him on his heroic 
journey into Greece, and ceased not with his death. Even 
after that, the vengeance and rage of his enemies — the indis- 
cretion and timidity of friends — the material or moral sjdccu- 
lations of all, together with the assurance of impunity — con- 
tinued to feed the fire which an end so glorious as his ought 
to have quenched.* 

* The system of depreciating B^-ron's acts never once ceased. It followed 
him to Greece and even to the tomb. Count Gamba, his friend and companion, 
in speaking of the excellent health enjoyed by all during the passage from Ge- 
noa to Greece, says : — 

" We were in excellent health and spirits during our whole voyage from Italy 
to Greece, and for this we were partly indebted to our medical man, and partly 
to that temperance which was observed b}' every one on board, except at the be- 
ginning of the voyage by the captain of our vessel, who, however, ended bj- 
adopting our mode of life. I mention this to contradict an idle storj' told in a 
magazine (' The London ') ' that Lord Byron on this voj'age passed tlie principal 
part of the day drinking with the captain of the ship.' Lord "Byron, as we all 
did, passed his time chiefly reading. He dined alone on deck ; and sometimes in 
the evening he sat down with us to a glass or two, not more, of light Asti wine. 
He amused himself in jesting occasionally with the captain, whom he ended, how- 
ever, by inspiring with a love of reading, such as he thought he had never felt 
before." 

But his enemies were not discouraged. When they saw that BjTon landed in 
one of the Ionian Islands, which was a far wiser and more prudent course to 
adopt, and one which might prove infinitely more beneficial to Greece than going 
straight to the Morea, they spread the report that instead of going to Greece, he 
spent his life in debauchery and in the continuation of his poem of '' Don Juan," 
at rest in a lovely villa situated on one of the islands. Moore informed him 
rather abruptly of this report, which distressed him greatly. 



Lord Byron's Love of Truth. GOo 

But if the war against him did not cease, his perseverance 
and courage in saying what he thought did not cease eitlier. 
Who more than he despised popuhirity and literary success, 
if they were to be i)urchased at the cost of trutli ? 

" Were I alone against the world," said he, " I would not 
exchange my freedom of thought for a throne." And again : 
" He who wishes not to be a despot, or a slave, may speak 
freely." 

That such independence of mind, aided by such high 
genius, should have alarmed certain coteries — not to speak 
of certain political and religious sets, who were all powerful 
— may easily be conceived. We can not feel surprise at the 
scandals they got up in defense of their privileges, when at- 
tacked by a new power who made every species of baseness 
and hypocrisy tremble ; nor can we wonder that, unknowing 
where it would stop, they should have sought to cast dis- 
credit on the oracle by slandering the man. That the bark 
bearing him to exile should have been pushed on by a wind 
of angry passions in coalition — by a breeze not winged by 
conscience — may also be conceived ; but to conceive is not to 
absolve, and in using the above expression we only mean to 
allow due share to human nature in general — to the charac- 
ter, manners, and perhaps to the special requirements of En- 
gland. And if we ought not to condone party spirit in pol- 
itics, defending privileges to the death ; nor the anti-Chris- 
tian ferocity displayed by that portion of the clergy who, 
without reason or sincerity, attacked him from the pulpit ; 
nor yet the malice and revenge displayed in the vile slanders 
that pursued him to his last hour ; we can, on the other hand, 
comprehend, and even, up to a certain point, excuse this pros- 
perous and noble country of England for not classing her 
great son among popular poets — for hiding her admiration 
cautiously: since it must be acknowledged that Lord Byron 
often acted and wrote rather f/.s belonging to humanity, than 
merely as belonging to England. 

But if he were treated with the same injustice by foreign- 
ers, could the same excuse be made for them? Would a 
man be excusable if laziness and carelessness made him ac- 
cept, without examination, some type set xip for Lord Byron 
by a country wounded in her self-love, as England had been, 



654 Lord Byron's Love of Truth. 

or the reserves made by hostile biographers, under the 
weighty influeuce of a society oi'ganized as English society 
then was ? The vile system which consists in seeking to give 
a good opinion of one's own morality by being severe on the 
morality of others, is only too well known. Woiild it be ex- 
cusable to apply it ruthlessly to Lord Byron ? — to pretend to 
repeat that in attacking prejudice he wounded morals ? — that 
he injured vii'tue by w^arring against hypocrisy? — that by 
using a right inherent to the human mind in some hypothet- 
ical lines of a poem, written at twenty-one years of age, and 
which is beyond the comprehension of the multitude, since 
the greater number of mankind neither read elevated poetry 
nor works of high taste ; is it not absurd to pretend that he 
wished to upset them in their religious belief, and deprive 
them of truths which are at once their consolation, support, 
and refuge in time of sorrow and suffering ? 

Nevertheless, Frenchynen have spoken thus ; and in this 
way, through these united causes. Lord Byron has remained 
unappreciated as a man and unfairly judged as a poet. 

One calls him the poet of evil ; another the hard of sorroic. 
But no ! Lord Byron was not exclusively either one or the 
other. He was the poet of the soul, ]ns,t as Shakspeare was 
before him. 

Lord Byron, in writing, never had in view virtue rather 
than vice. To take his stand as a teacher of humanity, at 
his age, would have seemed ridiculous to him. After having 
chosen subjects in harmony with his genius, and a point of 
Yiew favorable to his poetic temperament, which especially 
required to throw off" the yoke of artificial passions and of 
weak, frivolous sentiments, what he really endeavored was 
to be powerfully and energetically ti'ue. He thought that 
truth ought always to have precedence over every thing 
else — that it was the source of the beautiful in art, as well as 
of all good in souls. To him lies were evil and vice ; truth 
was good and virtue. As a poet, then, he was the bard of 
the soul and of truth ; and as a man, all those who knew 
him, and all who read his works, must proclaim him the poet 
who has come nearest to the ideal of truth and sincerity. 

And now, after having studied this great soul imder every 
aspect, if there were in happy England men who should es- 



Lord Byron's Love of Truth. 655 

teem themselves higher in the scale of virtue tlian Lord By- 
ron, because having never been troubled in their behef, either 
through circumstances or the nature of their own mind, they 
7ieveAulnutted or expressed any doubt; because they are the 
happy husbands of those charming, indulgent, admirable 
women to be found in England, who love and forgive so 
much; because, being rich, they have not refused some trifle 
out of their superfluity to the poor ; because, proud and hap- 
py in privileges bestowed by their constitution, they have 
never blamed those in200ioer: if these prosperous ones deem- 
ed themselves superior to their great fellow-citizen, would it 
be illiberal in them to express now a difi"erent opinion? 
Might we not without rashness affirm, that they should rath- 
er hold themselves honored in the virtue and glory of their 
illustrious countryman, humbly acknowledging that their 
own greater happiness is not the work of their own hands? 



REFLECTIONS UPON MR. DISRAELI'S NOVEL 
"VENETIA:" 

A SEMI- BIOGRAPHY OF LORD BYRON. 

Is Mr. Disraeli to be classed among the biographers of 
Lord Byron because in his preface to " Venetia " he declares 
that his object 'is to portray Lord Byron ? We do not think 
so. Truth and eri'or, romance and history, are too much in- 
tei-mixed, and the author himself confesses this fact in calling 
his work a novel. But while denying to " Venetia " the right 
of being styled a biography, we must admit that it is both a 
deep, true, and at times admirable study of the fine and 
so ill-judged character of Lord Byron. The extraordinary 
qualities with which he was gifted, both in heart and in mind, 
his genius, his amiability, his irresistible attractions, his al- 
most supernatural beauty, are all set forth with consummate 
ability, and the greatest penetration. He has made all his 
other characters, which are for the most part imaginary, sub- 
servient to this end ; and he has created some (such as Lady 
Annabel) which moralists will not easily admit to be possible, 
it being granted that all the characters in the book are men- 
tally sane. It is questionable whether the virtues and quali- 
ties which adorn Lady Annabel are compatible with the de- 
fects of her nature. Mr. Disraeli has acted in the same way 
as regards the circumstances of Byron's life ; he has heaped 
them together without any regard to what may or may not 
be true in their supposed occurrence, some of them being 
founded on reality and others not so. 

He has given Byron two individualities. Lord Cadurcis 
represents Byron from his infancy to the time of his marriage, 
and Mr. Herbert equally repi-esents Lord Byron from that 
fatal epoch till his death. The selection of two persons to 
represent one same character and to allow of Byron's simple 



A- Semi-Biography of Lord Byron. 657 

vet complex nature l)eing better understood was a very ha])- 
py p]iiIoso[)}uc'al notion. 

lie poi-trays Lord l^yron as he Avas, or as he would have 
been in the given circumstances ; and he pictures the others 
as they should or might have been, not as they were. In 
reading " Venetia " it is impossible not to like Lord Cadurcis, 
and to admire him, just as all those Avho knew Lord Byron 
loved and esteemed him, or not to respect Mr. Herbert, whom 
he styles " the best and greatest of men," as he Avould have 
been revered had Byron reached a greater age. He depicts 
Byron at every epoch of his life, and as circumstances develop 
his latent predispositions. 

He first shows him to xis as the innocent child, whose heart 
is full of tenderness, meekness, sensibility, and docility, such 
as his tutor, Dr. Drury, said he was : " rather easier to be led 
with a silken string than with a cable ;" who is gifted with a 
noble and pi'oud nature, which is easily moved ; who possesses 
a great sense of justice and an undaunted courage; who 
scorns excuse and cares not to lessen his fault. He then 
shows him as the thoughtful boy, both when alone and with 
others ; and as the gayest and wildest of creatures when in 
the company of the beloved companion of his childish sports ; 
a boy full of kindness, and of the desire to please; whose ab- 
sence is ever a subject of regret, so great is the love he in- 
spires, both in his master and in his servants, and indeed in 
all who come near him. At his early age can already be 
traced the germs of those qualities which foretell that bril- 
liant mind wdiich is to win some day the heart of a nation, 
and dazzle the fancy of a world of admirers. The sight of 
the fair hair and of the angelic beauty of the little Venetia is 
enough to dry his tears ; and herein we not only perceive al- 
ready the extreme impressionable disposition of his nature, 
but also the power and influence which beauty is destined to 
exercise over him. The love of solitude and meditation is al- 
ready traceable in the child. He loves to wander at night 
among the dark and solitaiy cloisters of his Abbey ; he loves 
to listen to the whistling of the wind re-echoed by the clois- 
ters ; he delights in the murmurs of the waters of his lake 
when the winter storms disturb their serenity, and uproot 
Ihe strongest oaks of his park. Proud of his race, his whole 

E E 2 



658 "Venetia:" 

nature sympathizes with the glorious deeds of his ancestors, 
and one feels that he would fain rather die than show him- 
self unworthy of them. 

One sees the germs of poetry sown in his mind — but one 
feels that the heart alone can make them fructify, and give 
them an outward form. Nothing is more touching than the 
tenderness which he feels and inspires wherever he goes. 

Mr. Disraeli then shows him in his youth, just at the time 
when he is to leave college for the university, and presents 
him to the reader as a remarkably well-educated young man, 
in whom the best principles have been inculcated, and whose 
conduct and conversation bear evidence of a pure, generous, 
and energetic soul "that has acquired at a very early age 
much of the mature and fixed character of manhood without 
losing any thing of that boyish sincerity and simplicity that 
are too often the penalty of experience. 

" He was indeed sincerely religious, and as he knelt in the 
old chapel that had been the hallowed scene of his boyish de- 
votions, he ofiered his ardent thanksgiving to his Creator 
who had mercifully kept his soul pure and true, and allowed 
him, after so long an estrangement frorn. the sweet spot of 
his childhood, once more to mingle his supplications with his 
kind and virtuous friends.'* 

"He is Avhat I always hoped he would be," says Lady 
Annabel. " Remember what a change his life had to endure ; 
few, after such an interval, would have returned with feelings 
so kind and so pure. I always fancied that I observed in him 
the seeds of great virtues and great talents, but I was not so 
sanguine that they would have flourished as they appear to 
have done." 

Young as he is, he is already accustomed to reflect ; and 
the result of his dreams is a desire to live away from the 
world with those he loves. The world as seen by others has 
no attraction for him. What the world covets appears to 
him paltry and faint. He sympathizes with great deeds, but 
not with a boisterous existence. He cares not for that which 
is ordinary. He loves what is rare and out of the common 
way. He dwells uj)on the deeds of his ancestors in Palestine 
and in France, who have left a memorable name in the annals 
of their country. Cadurcis experiences inwardly a desire, 



A Skmi-Biografhy of Lokd Byron. 659 

and even the power to imitate their example. He feels that 
to become the world's wonder no sacritice is great enough ; 
but in this age of mechanism, Avhat career is left to a chival- 
rous spirit like his? He then longs for the happiness of pri- 
vate life in the company of so perfect a creature as Venetia ; 
but he is still so young, and Venetia, Avho loves him like a 
brother and a friend, can not as yet understand the nature 
of another kind of love. He then leaves for the university, 
with grief implanted at the bottom of his heart. Disraeli 
then shows how, after three years, during which time his gen- 
ius had been smouldering as it were, it at last appeared in a 
splendor quite iinrivalled and unexampled, like a star equally 
strange and brilliant, which scarcely has it become visible in 
the horizon, than it already reaches its zenith. Not only is 
he distinguished by his writings, but by a thousand other 
ways, which fill the heart and dazzle the eyes. Where every 
thing is remarkable he is most noticed ; and the most con- 
spioious where all is brilliant. He is envied by men, praised 
and sought after by women, admii'ed by all. His life has be- 
come a perpetual triumph, a splendid act, which is enthusi- 
astically applauded, and in which he ever plays the best and 
most heroic part. In the midst of this infatuation of a whole 
nation, among those handsome and noble women who forget 
themselves too much since they forget themselves entirely 
for the honor of a look from him, why is he not happy? 
What is he craving for? What is his occupation? Why, 
when envied by all, is he yet to be pitied ? It is that his life 
is still, and will ever be, the life of the heart Avhich finds no 
satisfaction to its desire in the midst of the world wherein it 
is doomed to live. 

On one occasion he finds himself at the house of the most 
fashionable woman in London, of the great and beautiful per- 
son whose love for him is greater than he would wish. Many 
people are assembled there ; dinner is about to be announced. 
No one but himself attracts attention or calls for enthusiastic 
eulogies ; yet he is sad, absent, wearied. By his proud, hand- 
some looks, his reserve, and his melancholy attitude, he might 
be taken for an unearthly being, condemned, as a punishment, 
to visit our terrestrial orb. All of a sudden his melancholy 
gives way to the liveliest animation ; his cheeks glow, and 



t)dO "Venetia:" 

happiness beams in his beautiful eyes. What has happened ? 
Among the guests arriving he has heard the servant call out 
the name of his old tutor at Cherbury, the friend of all the 
friends of his youth. Raised to the dignity of a bishop, the 
late tutor has arrived in London to take his seat in the House 
of Lords. Again to see tliis friend of his youth, who is like- 
ly to speak to him of Cherbury, which he loved so dearly, 
and of Venetia, is a pleasure which his triumphs have never 
afforded him ; and from that moment all is changed in his 
eyes, every thing is smiling, every thing is bright. 

He learns that Lady Annabel and Venetia have left their 
retreat of Cherbury and have arrived in London. Cadurcis 
has but one thought, one aspiration, that of seeing them again. 
He does see Venetia again, and he feels that the world's 
praises are no longer any thing to him, except to be placed 
at her feet, and that he would give up all the idolatry of 
which he is the object for one year of happiness spent at 
Cherbury. When Venetia sees her ideal realized, and that 
Lord Cadurcis unites in him all the qualities of her dear 
Plantagenet with those brilliant and imposing talents Avhich 
command love and admiration ; when she beholds in him the 
genius of her father linked with the heart of her earliest 
friend, to whom she is still so deeply attached ; when she 
sees her dear Plantagenet " courted, considered, crowned, in- 
censed — in fact, a great man " living in an atmosphere of glory 
and in the midst of the applause of his contemporaries, Venetia 
exchanges her fraternal love, which was so touching, for the 
most ardent passion which one perfect creature can inspire in 
one as perfect as itself 

But the obstacle to their happiness now arises, and Lady 
Annabel it is who becomes metamorphosed into a woman 
whose judgment is false, whose prejudices are great, whose 
principles are inexorable ; who knows nothing of the world, 
nothing of her own heart nor of the human lieart ; who judges 
all things by cei'tain arbitrary rules, and acts sternly in ac- 
cordance with her inexplicable judgment. All the love which 
she would have had for Plantagenet at Cherbury is turned 
into hatred on learning that he has become a great poet, the 
admiration of his country, the observed of all observers ; that 
all the world is anxious to see him, that the finest ladies sigh 



A Semi-Biogkaphy of Lord Byron. 661 

for one of his looks, that lu? is not insensible to their admira- 
tion, that he is a Whig, and not only a Whig, but very near- 
ly a rebel. She reads his poems, and her astonishment is only 
surpassed by the horror with which they inspire her. She 
sees Herbert in Cadurcis, and unable as she was to understand 
the former, so is she unequal to the task of comprehending 
Cadurcis. An imaginative being makes her tremble ; such a 
creature can only be a monster. The praises bestowed upon 
Cadurcis do not shake her prejudices. His cousin, a brave 
sailor — a Tory, whose nature is as noble as it is frank and 
loyal — in vain tells her that Cadurcis is one of the most gen- 
erous, most amiable, and most praiseworthy of men. In vain 
does he assure her that notwithstanding the difference of 
their jDolitical opinions, he can scarcely give her an idea of the 
delicacy and unbounded goodness which he has shown — that 
his heart is perfect, that his intellect is the finest that ever 
existed, and that if his conduct has at times been a little irreg- 
ular, allowances must be made for the temptations Avhich as- 
sailed him at the age of twenty-one, the sole master of his 
acts, and with all London at his feet. " It is too much for any 
one's head ; but say or think what the world may, I know 
•here is not a finer creature in existence. Venetia, who feels 
the truth of all this, iuAvardly exclaims, ' Dear, dear Cadurcis, 
can one be surprised at your being beloved when you are so 
generous, so amiable, so noble, so affectionate !' But the poor 
child in vain recalls to her mother the conduct of Plantage- 
net, who displays constancy in his true affections. ' No,' ex- 
claims Lady Annabel, ' minds like his have no heart, a differ- 
ent impulse directs their existence — I mean imagination.' " 

Lady Annabel tortures her daughter, to extort from her 
the promise that she will never marry Lord Cadurcis. Her 
devotion for that daughter, which seemed to be the essence 
of her life, is no longer in this hard-hearted woman but a form 
of her egotism ; and Venetia, vexed in all her natural senti- 
ments, instead of being the idol of her aflections, becomes in 
reality the martyr of her pride. 

After dwelling upon the agony of mind experienced by 
these two beautiful and loving souls, both victims of Lady 
Annabel's cruelty, Disraeli shows us Cadurcis a prey to de- 
spair ; enduring the consequences of the fashionable life 



662 "Venetia:" 

which he is compelled to lead, that is, of the dissipated ex- 
istence which he wades through against his will ; the victim, 
besides, of the jealous and fanatical love of the great lady 
whose yoke he had not been able as yet to shake off. A 
duel between him and the lady's husband is the result, and 
nothing is more admirable than the picture of Lord Byron 
(or Lord Cadurcis) in all the scenes which precede and fol- 
low this duel ; his calmness, his courage, the mixture of hu- 
mor and wit with which he ever was wont to meet the great- 
est perils, and which was one of the characteristics of his na- 
ture, and, above all, that great and noble generosity of which 
he gave so many proofs in every circumstance and at every 
period of his life. Then followed the consequences of the 
duel, and the capital derived from it by the accumulated 
stupidity and revenge of those inferior jDersons jealous of his 
superiority and of his popular fame. 

Nothing is so beautiful, however, as the scene which takes 
place first at the club and then at the House of Lords, where 
Ml'. Disraeli shows this noble and calumniated creature the 
object of the base and hypocritical jealousy of most of .his 
colleagues, who, notwithstanding their hatred for him, were 
wont to call themselves his friends ; when, exhausted an(f 
almost the victim of a ferocious hatred of an excited popu- 
lace, he stands calm in the midst of these truly English ele- 
ments in the attitute of an archangel or of a demi-god, op- 
posing them and maintaining his ground until with the aid 
of a few brave and faithful friends, of the constable's trun- 
cheon, and the arrival of the mounted guard, he succeeds in 
getting rid of them altogether. All this, although not quite 
true, either as a historical fact or in its details, is, however, 
so admirably told, that it may be taken as a document well 
worthy of consideration by the biographer, and of which ex- 
tracts can not be given without spoiling the whole. 

In the midst of the turmoil occasioned by this duel, in 
which his adversary had been seriously wounded, Cadurcis 
suddenly finds himself abandoned by those who called them- 
selves his friends, calumniated by the press, who spare no 
falsehoods to disparage his character, but whose contradic-' 
tions have no eflect in his great successes. Cadurcis, gifted 
as he is with an extreme sensibility, and accustomed to live 



A Semi-Biography of Lord Byron. 663 

in an atmosphere of praise, finds himself suddenly nailed to 
the pillory of public indignation, sees his writings, his habits, 
his character, and his person, equally censured, ridiculed, and 
blemished ; in fact, he finds himself the victim of reaction, 
and yet all this does not affect his mind ; his true agony is 
caused not by the regret at losing his prestige and his popu- 
larity, nor by the conduct of those who style themselves his 
friends, and w^ho now joined his enemies in spi'eading and 
believing in the false reports respecting him. His greatness 
of soul and the purity of his conscience alike help him to en- 
dure these misfortunes ; but what really does give him pain, 
is the thought that all these absuixl rumors will reach the 
ears of Venetia. He has lost all hope of obtaining her hand, 
but he feels the want of her esteem. He wishes her to judge 
him as he deserves to be judged ; and the thought that she 
likewise may put faith in the infamous and stupid reports 
which are spread about him, throws him into despair. When 
his cousin announces to him that he has succeeded in making 
the truth know^n to Venetia, how consoled he feels, and how 
grateful is he to his cousin! To his credit, the cousin did* 
actually, in presence of Lady Annabel, who remained in- 
credulous, endeavor to re-establish facts in their true light; 
and despite her sullen mood, did he courageously undertake 
the defense of Cadurcis, accuse the Mounteagles and the 
world in general, and conclude by declaring that " Cadurcis 
was the best creature that ever existed, the most unfortu- 
nate, the most ill-treated ; and that if one should be liable to 
be pursued for such an affair, over which Cadurcis could 
have no control, there was not a man in London who could be 
sheltered from it for ten minutes." When Lord Cadurcis re- 
ceives Venetia's message, which is to tell him that he remains 
for her what he has ever been, the announcement acts upon 
him as a charm, brings calm back to his mind, and renders 
him indifferent for the future to the opinion of the world. 
The experience of that day has entirely cured him of his for- 
mer deference for the opinion of society. The world has out- 
raged him. He no longer owes any thing to the world. His 
reception in the House of Lords, and the riot outside the 
house, have severed his ties Avith all classes, from the highest 
to the lowest ; his grateful heart will ever preserve the remera- 



664 "Venetia:" 

. brance of those who have shown limi true affection by dis- 
playing moral courage in his defense. But they are few, — 
some relations, or nearly such by their association with them, 
and for these his gratitude and his respect are unlimited; 
but as for the others, he will pay them back by showing 
them his contempt, by publishing the truth respecting them, 
their country, their habits, their laws, their customs, their 
opinions, in order that they may be known and judged by 
the whole world, — a tribunal far more enlightened than the 
limited one of his native isle. Henceforth he resolves never 
again to meet the advances of those civilized " ruffians " who 
affect to be sociable. He prepares to leave England, witli 
the intention never again to return to it. He shuts himself 
up in his room for a week, and allowing free scope to his 
passionate and wounded soul, he writes his adieu to England, 
and in the task his mind finds relief In this poem, wherein 
a few well-merited sarcasms find a place, and wherein there 
are many allusions to Venetia, there are passages so delicate, 
so tender, so irresistibly pathetic, that it exercised an extraoi'- 

€dinary influence upon public opinion. Again the tide of 
public sympathy runs high in his favor ; it is found that Ca- 
durcis is the most calumniated of mortals, that he is more 
interesting than ever; and Lady Mounteagle is spoken of as 
she deserves. Cadurcis is, however, too proud to accept new 
sympathies likely to make him suffer all that he has ali^eady 
suffered. He quits his native land, siirrounded by a halo of 
glory, but with contempt on his part for that popular favor 
of which he has too cruelly experienced the worth. He sails 
for Greece, and here Disraeli shows how he led a life ot 
study, and finally depicts him, under the name of Herbert, as 
a philosopher and a virtuous man, who, after behaving as a 
hero, and after abandoning some of the illusions of youth, 
and principally that of making men wiser and better, aspii'es 
only at leading a mild, regular, virtuous, and philosophical 
existence. 

Notwithstanding the great charm of Mr. Disraeli's book, 
to give extracts from which would only be to spoil it, it 
must, however, be allowed that the real and the imaginary 
are too much intermingled. All the fictions of time and 
place, which only leave the sentiments of the real man un- 



A Semi-Biography of Lord Byron. 665 

touched, all the double and treble characters which at times 
quit, and at others resume, their individuality almost as in a 
dream, tefid to create a confusion which is prejudicial to truth. 
Thus, Lady Annabel has charms and qualities wholly incom- 
patible with her supposed stei'n severity. Miss Venetia, a 
perfect emanation of love and beauty, is at times transformed 
into an imaginary Miss Chaworth, and at others into a be- 
loved sister, and at others again into an adorable Ada ; 

Lady Mounteagle is sometimes too like, and often too un- 
like, the real Lady C. L ; the whole is confused, fatig- 
uing to the mind, and too fictitious not to be regretted, since 
the express intention of the author is to paint a historical 
character, acting in the midst of circumstances generally 
founded on reality. 

Li following out the intention of the author, and his want 
of respect for truth, it is impossible not to ask ourselves why, 
while respecting circumstances of such slight import as the 
})reservation of the Christian names of the mother and wife, 
he has not done the same for more imjoortant accidents in the 
hero's life ? Why, for instance, have described his childhood 
as a painful time? Was not Lord Byron surrounded with 
the tenderest cares while in Scotland ? Had he been unhappy 
there, would he have transmitted to us in such happy lines 
his remembrance of the time which he spent in the North ? 
Is it not in Scotland that his heart was nursed with every 
affection, that his mind drank in the essence of poetry ? 
Why make his mother die when he was only twelve years 
of age, since she died only on his return from Spain and from 
Greece, that is, when he was twenty-two ? Why make her 
die of grief at being abandoned by him, in consequence of an 
imaginary scene which obliges her to take refuge in the midst 
of a band of Bohemian travellers, when it is known that she 
died rather by the excess of joy which she experienced at t'he 
thought of seeing him again after an absence of nearly two 
years ? Why change the ages, and give Miss Chaworth 
fifteen when she Avas eighteen, or himself eighteen when he 
was fifteen ? Why give him siich an affectionate guardian 
instead of Lord Carlisle ? It may be argued that in these 
changes in the actual life of Lord Byron, we must only per- 
ceive the genius of the writer, who by making the hero's in- 



666 "Vsnetia:" 

fancy a sad one, and causing the first glimpse of happiness 
to dawn upon him at Cherbury, in depriving him of his 
mother at an early age in order that he may live entirely in 
the Herbert family, where he finds so much happiness, and 
repays it so well, Mr. Disraeli believed that he could bring- 
out in better relief all the tenderness, kindness, docility, 
gratitude, constancy, and those other rare and splendid quali- 
ties of his hero's young soul. In reducing Miss Herbert's 
years, and in increasing those of his hero, the author no doubt 
wished to render forcible the sentiments which a child of 
fifteen could not otherwise have inspired in a young girl of 
eighteen. The imaginary duel was probably conceived to 
afford the author an opportunity of showing his hero under 
other admirable aspects, and especially to furnish him with 
the means of casting blame upon English society, of absolv- 
ing him, and of showing how he was the victim of inherent 
national prejudices, which time has not yet succeeded in erad- 
icating. 

The exuberance and variety of the gifts which nature had 
bestowed upon Byron, together with the universality of his 
genius, which created in him such apparently singular con- 
trasts, no doubt inspired Mi\ Disraeli with the idea that to 
make him better known it was necessary to make two persons 
of one, each of a different age, so as to be able to divide his 
qualities according to their suitableness to those ages, and 
to make him act and speak in accordance with each given 
character : to show us the man in his moral, social, and intel- 
lectual capacity during his transition from early youth to a 
maturer age, after the experience of those hardships of life 
which have purified and strengthened his soul. The first 
period is represented by the ardent and j^assionate Lord 
Cadurcis, the other by the wise and philosophical Herbert. 
In making Herbert live to a mature age, and in centring in 
him every grace, every quality, every perfection with which 
a mortal can be gifted, he wished to show to what degree of 
moral perfection Lord Byron might have attained, and how 
happy he might have been in the peace and quiet of domestic 
life had he been joined to another wife in matrimony, since 
notwithstanding Lady Annabel's faults, happiness was not 
out of Herbert's reach. The conclusion to which Disraeli no 



A Semi-Biography of Lokd Bykon, 667 

doubt points is the inward avowal by Lady Annabel herself 
that she, not Herbert, was the cause of their separation, and 
of their useless misfortunes. Again, when young Lord Ca- 
durcis returns from Greece, and when Disraeli recounts his 
conversation with Herbert, his intention, no doubt, was to 
show us the intellectual and moral progress which time has 
caused him to make, — the transition from the " Childe Plar- 
old" of twenty-one to the "Childe Harold" of "Manfred" of 
twenty-nine ; and from the " Childe Harold " of thirty to the 
" Don Juan " and " Sardanapalus " of thirty-three ; he thus 
was able to put in relief that mobility of character which ex- 
isted in him as regards a certain order of ideas, and which 
blended itself so well with the depth and the constancy of 
other of his views, enabling us to penetrate into the recesses 
of that beautiful soul, and displaying to our admiring gaze 
its numberless springs of action, — at times his constant aspi- 
ration to come to the aid of humanity, and his little hope of 
succeeding in modifying our corrupt nature ; his love of 
glory, and how little he cared for the appreciation of the 
public of which he had experienced the fickle favors ; his 
knowledge of life, his simple tastes, his love of nature, and 
the greatness of his mind, of which no ambition or worldly 
feeling could tarnish the simplicity and even sublimity. Li 
giving him two individualities the novelist was better able to 
combine the passionate sarcasms of Cadurcis with the smiles 
of goodness aftd tolerance of Herbert, and to show him to 
us as he was wont to converse, mixing the wittiest remarks 
Avith the most serious reflections. He had made him express 
a number of opinions apparently contradictory, but which 
belonged to his peculiar character, which was equally simple 
and complex, alike sensible and passionate, subject to a 
thousand influences of weather and seasons ; and though in- 
flexible in his principles of honor as in the whole course of 
his existence, yet changeable in things of minor importance. 
He loves to mystify, and writes, without reflecting as to the 
possible consequences, a number of things which cross his 
mind, and in which he does not believe, but of which his 
love of humor foi-ces the expression to his lips. Again, Dis- 
raeli tells us of a number of his real ideas, initiates us into his 
literary tastes, his philosophical views, his prefei-ences, his 



668 "Venetia:" 

admiration for the great men of antiquity and of modern 
times ; tells us why his favorite philosophers are Plato and 
Ej^icurus, his favorite characters in antiquity Alexander and 
Alcibiades, both young and handsome conquerors ; in modern 
times, Milton and Sir Philip Sydney, Bayle and Montaigne ; 
what his opinions respecting Shakspeare and Pope, what 
Cadurcis, and what Herbert thinks of these ; and finally he 
gives us his views upon the love which we should have for 
truth, ujjon the influence which political situations bear upon 
the grandeur of country, not only in literature and in arts, 
but likewise in philosophy, and in a number of other ways. 

All these means employed by the great novelist certain- 
ly succeed in making of " Venetia " a most delightful book ; 
but notwithstanding its charms, as we read, it is impossible 
not to ask one's self at times whether a historical novel is 
thus entitled to encroach upon the biography of great men. 
Without pretending to settle the question, I own that I rath- 
er appreciate the truth of a historical work than all the 
pleasure which the talent of an author can afibrd me, and it 
appears to me that if Mr. Disraeli, Avith his admirable talent, 
had chosen to write the life of Lord Byron, he would have 
done better. We should not, it is true, have had in the bi- 
ography either the pleasant life at Cherbury, or the scene at 
Newstead, neither the duel nor its consequences ; but we 
should have had almost a similar Lady Mounteagle, and we 
should have seen the rise of that same base spirit in his col- 
league which greeted him at one period of his life, the same 
wickedness which assailed him, the same jealousy with which 
he was looked upon, the same cruel persecution to which he 
was subjected, the same hatred which assailed him on the 
part of the people who had a little before so idolized him, 
and, in short, the same reaction in the public mind which 
actually took place. We should, on the other hand, have 
equally seen the same noble mind, too proud again to sub- 
mit to the curb under the yoke of popular public feeling. 
He would not have shown us a charming Lady Annabel 
styled a virtuous woman, though she abandons her husband 
simply because she believes he no longer entertains for her all 
the ardent love which he had evinced during the honey-moon ! 
— a Lady Annabel, indeed, who constitutes in herself a be- 



A Semi-Biogkai'HY of Lord Byron. 669 

ing morally impossible, who though she does abandon her 
husband, spends her night in bewailing his loss at the foot 
of his portrait ; Avho, though she adores her daughter, nearly 
causes her death with grief from the fear Avhich she has 
that the child will not marry a man of genius like her father. 
Instead of such a woman we should have had, if not one 
more logical in her acts, at least more real and historical, and 
exemplifying the painful and murderous effects of silence in 
the condemnation of a man against whom the venom of 
calumny has been directed^-that man being no less a person 
than her own husband. Instead of a Lady Annabel repent- 
ant at last, and self-accusing, truth and reality would have 
presented us with an insensible, hard-hearted, and inexorable 
woman, who remains inflexible to the last, and who deserves 
that the eflects should be applied to her of the words which 
Cadui'cis, in a moment of despair, pronounces against Vene- 
tia's m.other, w^hen the former declares that she is the victim 
of her mother, but that nevertheless she will do her duty : 

" Then my curse upon your mother's head ! May Heav- 
en rain all its plagues upon her ! The Hecate !" 

We should not have had a Venetia who is truly a delicious 
emanation from a poet's mind, and the only woman worthy 
of becoming the wif(! of Lord Byron, who sums up in heirself 
all the tenderness which he must have inspired in or felt for 
a woman, a sister, or a daughter. But we should have had, 
instead of her, three persons who really existed, and who 
exercised a great influence over Lord Byron's life. The one 
a young lady of eighteen, whom Lord Byron styled light and 
coquettish, but who really possessed his heart at fifteen years 
of age ; the other his dear Augusta, who was truly a Venetia 
toward him ; and finally, his beloved little Ada, for whom he 
had such a paternal tenderness. Instead of an elderly Her- 
bert returning to domestic happiness, which would simply 
have been impossible with the wife whom Fate had chosen 
for Lord Byron, we should have had a handsome young man 
who has not waited until he had reached the mature age of 
Herbert to be adorned with every vii'tue, in whom reason is 
not the effect of growing years, whose wisdom is not that of 
the old ; and instead of the pathetic catastrophe which is at- 
tributed to Herbert and Cadurcis together, and which really 



670 "Venetia:" Etc. 

occurred to Shelley, we should have had Lord Byron's real 
death, which was infinitely more pathetic, and could have 
been described in equally beautiful and heartrending lan- 
guage. How sublime would have been the history of the 
death of that young man who at the age of thirty-four hero- 
ically sacrifices his life for the independence of a country 
which is not his own, and whose patriotism is greater than 
that of his countrymen, since he prefers the cause of human- 
ity to the interests of the little spot on the globe where he 
was born ! 

If, then, instead of a novel, Mr. Disraeli had given us a 
true history, the work would have been an evei'lasting monu- 
ment erected to the memory of two noble beings, and would 
have been transmitted to posterity as a valuable testimony 
of the virtues of Lord Byron. 

As the book stands, and written by such a man as Mr. 
Disraeli, it will ever remain a study worthy of being quoted 
among«those whose object it is to proclaim the truth respect 
ing Lord Byron. 



Pauis, November^ 1868. 



THE END. 



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